Guild Wars 2

I’ve been saying for awhile now that they would address the Scorched Earth hitting multiple times per tick with this balance patch. I wasn’t exactly sure what form that change would take, but the one they chose seems easiest for them so I’m not surprised. Just looking at the changes it should be more on-par with other condition classes like the Engineer, so it’s very likely not totally butchered.

Thief will still be bad. No changes to venoms either, so it’ll probably continue being “almost good enough” for general use there. With the big nerf to Alacrity, I’m curious to see what ideal strategies for Gorseval will be now.

[VZ] is still recruiting! I wanted to take this moment to congratulate our raid group on finally beating Gorseval for the first time last week! We’ve been fighting that guy and consistently getting him down to 1% HP, but have always been trolled, and then we finally did it! Super exciting to finally get a shot to complete Sabetha as a guild.

If the sort of thing we do as a guild interests you, please contact one of our officers and chat with us! We’ll be more than happy to see if you’re a good fit for the guild, both culturally and in content that we do.

I think the difficulty is just right, and my guild keeps playing it because it’s a lot of fun. If they got one thing right in this expansion, it’s the actual content and bosses of the first raid wing.

They haven’t officially announced it yet, but Bwadark is correct that its use was datamined. I would recommend holding off on creating any finalized gifts for the legendary until it’s been officially discussed.

Use the 2 skill, Decoy, and blow it up just as it reaches the Champ. That’ll let you get by. There are spots all along the way where you can get OOC and just wait for cooldowns; the 2 skill is basically what enables you to get by the really dangerous bits. You can also double dodge right when the CC hits and dodge the whole thing, but naturally you can only do this to one attack.

No problem. The thing to remember is that I’m not on a NDA, which means that I can tell you guys everything I hear… but also means they don’t tell me as much as we’d all like. I definitely think they’ll redo the worst instabilities, it just unfortunately won’t happen right away.

Ryn.6459:

Dusk, do you understand or have more info on why anet dropped dungeons and the logic with bad instabilities design? These two points are killing the game for me (actually the lack of new dungeons and f4actals).

I talked to them about the bad instabilities and didn’t get much in the way of solid response, but I think it’s in large part because they wanted to try to incentivize certain playstyles and didn’t have a good vision about how best to do that and also didn’t want to spend a ton of coder time on it when they needed to get single fractal levels working for HoT. I’m fairly confident horribad instabilities like “lose boons on dodge” are things they will replace later on. The issue is, as I understand, that all instabilities have to be coded (not scripted), which would take back-end developers off of other tasks Fractals need them for (like new map mechanics). The earliest you might expect to see them fixed would be when the new Fractals are released later this year.

As far as dungeons, it seems pretty clear to me that they don’t want players playing them. They don’t have the resources to do both Fractals and Dungeons, and Dungeons have a far lower ROI when compared with Fractals. The biggest thing, though, is that Dungeons would require massive reworks to get them to a state where they are sustainable. Basically, save yourself the false hope and let them go.

You should read this. It was fixed a week ago today.

SlyDevil.3952:

Dusk has been saying for weeks this was supposed to be patched with the 26th update, how did we get another thread on this.

Yeah, ANet is very aware of the exploit. I would be utterly shocked if they didn’t address it next Tuesday; I’ve been on their case a lot about it.

I do expect them to fix Fractals exploits with these larger, seasonal patches. They’ve committed to Fractals, and have a whole Fractals team that I’ve already worked with on some things to make sure they have the right information of what we want.

As far as dungeons, however, you’re absolutely correct. Unless it allows you to break the economy somehow, there’s an extremely low probability it will get addressed at all.

I, too, agree that removing the decoration limit within 1000 radius of each other would go a long way to enabling us to beautify rooms and such. This is especially relevant when we have small items like candles that are clearly intended to be used in large numbers in association with larger items. Thanks for asking around about it, Gaile!

I know which exploit is being discussed here, and ANet is aware of it. I would expect it to be fixed in the Winter patch coming up on the 26th, but no promises.

spoj.9672:

Its like their arah fixes. Instead of making lupi required to trigger the next even they just kept adding new invisible walls.

It’s far less effort both in development and in QA to just add an invisible wall than to rewire the programming behind the entire path.

Vekaiel.8493:

He had Ad Infinitum which is the legendary. That one has the animation.

You cannot acquire Ad Infinitum yet. I’ve seen this happen with Unbound too, but it seems to be a graphic bug that I’m unsure how to reproduce.

I always recommend (2). Because of the sales tax on the TP and the average cost of the encryptions, you want to avoid selling the encryptions at all costs and open any that you have. If your only expense is the “deeply discounted” key then statistically you will always maximize profit from every encryption you crack.

P.S. Make sure you’ve gotten all relevant Fractal masteries before opening them or you will lose out on profit.

It’s just some configuration parameters that yield the most useful and most accurate DPS outputs.

I am definitely a very casual player, but I’m also very interested in what my average DPS is. I use the overlay DPS meter that scrapes the chatbox with dekeyz’ config, and honestly I would have it turned on all of the time if it didn’t require me to make my UI normal sized (takes up too much space). I use it when testing new builds and trying to see what the best rotations are. Recently I used it to tweak my condition Thief build/rotations up to 18k-21k DPS in a group setting, and I was really pleased with how convenient it was.

In general my rule of thumb is to play whatever you’re the best at. A mediocre Chronomancer is worth far less than an expert Reaper, regardless of what is or isn’t meta. That said, everyone else who posted above is right; Reaper offers killer sustain and mediocre DPS, which can be useful in random / casual groups. My best recommendation, though, is to avoid groups that refuse you by class alone.

P.S. If you go down during this mission you can no longer get credit for the achievements even though they show on your buff bar.

My friend was actually complaining about this exact same issue yesterday. It’s definitely present since the purchase of the account bound inventory slots.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, we are still recruiting!

I also have an exciting announcement for the guild: we now have a guild hall jumping puzzle! I’ve also set up a challenge associated with it wherein if you complete the guild hall jumping puzzle while I’m online you can earn gold rewards from me! Just flag me down wherever I am and show me that you’re at the end (and promise that you didn’t cheat, since I haven’t blocked off the cheater’s path yet) and you earn a prize! The goal of this little project of mine was to give the guild hall some flavor and add a few more things for people to have fun with.

As always, if any of the things we do as a guild interest you don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of the officers! All of them would be more than happy to talk to you and see if you’d be a good fit for the guild.

Eh… I actually like the idea of leaderboards for the same reason I surprisingly liked the GRift leaderboards in D3. I think they’re a good idea and I think they’ll add longevity to the gameplay (I could see myself competing with other groups within my own guild to see who can beat things the fastest).

What I don’t want is for them to delay the legendary any further because of leaderboards, nor do I want leaderboards to be eating into time they’d be spending on new fractals. If the leaderboards are their own team of people, fine, but not at the expense of new Fractal content.

So what you two are saying is that my suggestion in the OP would’ve been far better because they could’ve spread candy cane usage out over the year. Glad you agree! I made the mistake of assuming it would get the same treatment as the Festive Imbiber achievement, and that’s entirely why I didn’t gobble my candy canes right away. It’s a shame, but at least it comes back next year for me to finish the achievement.

@ thisisit.6954: I’m unsure what you’re trying to communicate about errors; your second paragraph doesn’t make sense to me in the context of the discussion. Can you elaborate?

Ceesa.1350:

I wouldn’t be surprised if the price of the lower level gems has gone up as well as people look to transmogrify them.

Unfortunately they haven’t as the limiter in those upconversions is the dust.

thisisit.6954:

There is no way the people that used their canes up to get the AP would be happy if they changed it now at this late stage anyway.

It wouldn’t have harmed them if it was changed (they’d still have their AP) so I don’t see the issue.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Will the candy cane achievement be given similar treatment to Festive Imbiber? It’s not required for the shoulders, but it’s still one that is on a similar progression scale as Festive Imbiber.
Candy cane achievement will not stay available. It is not needed for anything else (except the meta). Progress will be saved and will be able to be finished next Wintersday.

This is extremely good information, thank you. At least progress is saved and can be completed next Wintersday. Because of that I don’t feel like I’m out of luck forever.

So I noticed that the Festive Imbiber achievement is listed under Community now so that it can still be completed. Hooray!

What about the Candy Cane achievement, though? That one was also pretty painful, and I made the (mistaken) assumption that it would get the same treatment. Apparently not! Is there any way this could be changed so that the Candy Cane achievement could still be done? Thanks!

GM Awesomeness.8619:

As for refunds: if you’ve had these account-bound items for ages, we won’t be doing refunds because you’ve already derived substantial benefit. If, however, you bought them more recently, we’re doing refunds on a case-by-case basis.

I appreciate the response, but respectfully contend that I don’t think this is an appropriate stance for customer support to take. When infinite gathering tools became account bound, players were able to get complete refunds for the extras that they did not need any longer regardless of time purchased. Additionally, when the wardrobe went live players were able to get complete refunds for any town clothes previously purchased regardless of time purchased. This situation is no different. Players’ gem store items become obsolete with the acquisition of this new functionality, and their permanent items that are no longer useful should be refunded regardless of time purchased. Seriously, with an account bound bag slot the best course of action regarding extra items like Salvage-o-Matics is to destroy them. That feels horrible and should not be something you guys proliferate.

Please reconsider your stance.

You must be exaggerating or have exceptionally bad luck. I make 10g+ from doing Fractal Champion / Veteran dailies, and I get about 1 ascended chest a week on average. This isn’t even counting the numerous exotics/rares/T6 I pick up along the way, which easily bring the total to over 15g on average.

Malediktus.9250:

Inventory space is always rare. Especially if it is account bound and cannot store it in guild banks or alt accounts.

And if your inventory space was too valuable before to keep the minis, then nothing has changed with this announcement.

You’re certainly free to try a customer support ticket, but I’ve been warning people ever since this was first posted that they’d do something about it.

Zodryn, I noticed in you’re spreadsheet you’re using Brawler’s Tenacity coupled with Impairing Daggers. This also benefits the heal skill, which is nice, but I’m not sure if it’s higher DPS than using Needle Trap with Deadly Trapper or not. 3 stacks of poison is nice, it’s true, but Havoc Master giving 7% damage all of the time is pretty good considering the high Power stat.

In testing it’s hard for me to know which is better for that third utility, so if you could shed some light on why you picked ID that’d be great. With your build you’re low on bleed duration, so I’m not surprised it’s better for you… But I think with full viper’s you can get bleed duration up to 66% which makes Needle Trap pretty great.

Expect to hear more soonish when the “looking forward” blog post hits.

Thaddeus.4891:

Wait a sec. Venomshare don’t help his dps. He give more dps to the other. I hope you don’t count the dps of other getting his venom as his dps right?

That’s the coolest part about VenomShare—It is your DPS because the game counts it as you applying the conditions from the venoms. So when an ally with a venom strikes the VG, it’s the Thief applying the condition, gaining the benefits from traits / condition duration, etc.

Video
Build

The most important thing to remember is the +33% damage to poison trait, which makes poison application incredibly strong for the Thief. Otherwise check it out! I promise it’s really good!

Condition Thief is actually surprisingly good. It can easily reach condition Engineer level DPS, benefits from Alacrity a lot (venoms are a pure DPS gain whenever cast), spends 80% of its time evading, and can single-handedly deal 75% damage to VG’s breakbar allowing you to keep other classes like Herald in their primary DPS sets. It’s no condition Warrior, that’s for sure, but having one in the raid group is actually really nice.

GrimmR.3541:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

I’m I the only one who is very very happy to see dungeons abandoned?

I guess you are.

+1

They’ll very likely send you back the infusion. Definitely open a support ticket.

I have every confidence they’re going to do something about this. I recently reported it up to them so they’re definitely aware.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

That’s some insane rng then. After fractal reward adjustment I get like 3 times more matrices per ring.

Remember that infused rings give two rolls on the table. I still average to around ~3 matrices per roll overall after having salvaged several dozen since patch.

It hasn’t been touched, but it’s heavily dictated by RNG. You just got lucky.

I’d prefer they increase the energy cost or cooldown of the skill rather than removing the evade frames. The problem with the skill is that it locks the Revenant in action, so without evade frames the skill becomes totally worthless as it makes you a sitting duck. I think if you made it weaker or removed the might, though, it’d also fall into disuse. If the cooldown or energy cost were increased, however, it’d still be useful just need to be used more tactfully.

I’ll make sure to pass along to the raid team that they shouldn’t be unique. Good catch.

The LFG still works. I actually pubbed both CoF and Arah yesterday—I know, shocking!

Definitely an oversight. I’ll make sure they know.

We’re still recruiting and still trudging along as we always have! If you have any questions about the guild don’t hesitate to contact us in-game (or me by forum PM)! Additionally, you can post here and I’ll answer those questions as well.

Bluewizard.2694:

Could any of the developers maybe add a new notification to the website in order to indicate whether a dev or anyone else from the staff has opened a topic? I can fully understand that devs can’t respond in every topic, but without a response people have no idea whether their input is read by any staff member or whether they are just talking to their own community. A notification or visual emblem next to a topic might resolve this problem.

It would be nice if there were an indicator pointing out that the specialists had posted in a thread, too! We each have specializations, and we post a lot in the most popular topics associated with the things we cover, but right now those replies sometimes get lost.

I am fairly confident, though, that not a single great suggestion that was met with high public agreement has gone unmentioned by me in my reports on topics I cover. Sometimes I even get into conversations with developers in-game where they ask for clarification on what was meant, or things to that effect. Ultimately, I can guarantee the developers are seeing the suggestions that are most prevalent and most widely supported throughout these forums.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I wouldn’t elevate Anet balancing that much.

They make errors, but based on recent balance passes made at the condition duration food it appears to be where they want it to be. It is certainly probable that eventually Giver’s stats, condition duration food, and boon duration food will be made to use the new stats they created with HoT and likely be tuned down, but that doesn’t necessarily make their current power level imbalanced nor does it imply that their usage is an exploit.

TexZero.7910:

Granted a vast majority of that went untouched….but pretty sure we have different uses of the word never.

It looks like you’re correct, they did call out one exploit in patch notes out of the hundreds they’ve fixed since the game came out. Maybe this means we’ll see more of it… or maybe not.

TexZero.7910:

I don’t believe anyone forgot this aside from the developers themselves. Why are the unique rewards so ungodly rare when there’s several of them to go around ?

If you looted one of them every time, the sellable items would quickly lose any value they have, the non-sellable ones would quickly become vendor/salvage trash, and players would complain anyway. Look at what happened to ascended rings with Fractals. The entire point of RNG loot is that when you do get something shiny you get excited. If you got something shiny every time it wouldn’t be exciting.. or shiny.

TexZero.7910:

Don’t get me started on unobtainable rewards that are only RNG based….Trinkets.

This will be fixed. I can assure you of that.

TexZero.7910:

I still do not see why we need bags that contain blues and greens to begin with when we could just as easily replace said reward with an optional select the champ garbage or the bonus currency. Thus allowing people to opt out of even more RNG and let them reasonably work toward obtaining the unique shiny.

Because magnetite shards are not intended to be used like that. They’re a backup means to get items outside the intended RNG. It would be nonsensical to let people opt out of the RNG to just build more of the currency; it goes against the very premise of the reward scheme.

SlyDevil.3952:

Can minis be removed from drop tables after they’ve already been acquired?

I actually believe they will find a use for the extra minis, so don’t delete them if you’ve got them.

VG and Gorseval are incredible fights, IMO. I love them a ton for different reasons. The combat mobility required, the tells, the stress, the escalating mechanics, etc. These are all things that make me enjoy the fights a lot.

What people forget is that Magnetite Shards are not designed to be the way you acquire all items. The intent is for you to get awarded them via RNG, but the currency is there to prevent people with terrible luck from never getting the items. It’s not intended to be profitable (weekly timegate); you do raids for the exclusive rewards and the challenge. If neither of those things interest you, then why are you putting yourself through the trouble?

I do raids multiple times a week with my guild. We bring different classes every time based on who is available, and based on who makes what mistakes every run is a different experience. It’s dynamic and exciting, we win and we lose, and ultimately we have a blast. I’m trying new builds that have never before been worth their salt in PvE and finding success with them. Raids have provided us a meaningful and challenging experience to have together, and as far as my experience with the content goes they’ve been a success I cannot be happier with.

Attacking Mossman from the pillar is a blatant exploit and will be addressed. When it gets addressed, I would be surprised if they announced it in patch notes; they never call out exploits like that.