Guild Wars 2

I know that there have been a lot of people bumping over to different servers, partly because the “world linking” isn’t to their taste and all. It’s certainly possible that just as many people play, but moved servers, so now yours is quiet…

Noah.4756:

I’m having huge lag spikes all evening now. I did a tracert to ArenaNet servers and the connection keeps having short time outs for these 3 ncsoft servers:

206-127-157-94.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.94] timing out
206-127-159-228.ncsoft.com [206.127.159.228] timing out
206-127-157-102.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.102] timing out

Are they simply dropping ICMP packets, or are they dropping traffic through the node as well? https://www.pingplotter.com/fix-your-network has useful information on how to determine the difference.

I find that I’m no longer camping either of scepter, or GS, on my condi build, at least when I’m running around doing, y’know, random stuff. Maybe that’d be different in T4 fractals, and, well, raids, y’know.

…but it’s definitely a big difference to how it used to be, thanks deathly chill buff.

You could also ask the support team in a ticket to make an exception for you, and/or hope that you stop being full because people un-wvw a bit at some point.

The ticket is the best bet, though.

FWIW, it’s unlikely that any CPU will be able to give you a “comfortable 60FPS” in GW2 in all game modes, simply because that depends on single core CPU performance that is literally inaccessible thanks to stupid things like the laws of physics!

That is, we can’t make a CPU fast enough to achieve that, given the limitations of the GW2 client.

Healix.5819:

For soloing, it might not be the highest DPS, but I doubt anything is faster than a pistol/pistol thief. Dagger is of course higher damage, but unload will instantly kill most enemies from range. I play random builds to 80 in the downtime. A sword/torch guardian is also fast, which gains a high crit chance early on and capable of blinking to and quickly killing enemies. However, those were both single targets and in most cases, I usually end up pulling 5-10 at a time, where a staff elementalist is going to win.

I was going to say this about the thief: depends a bit on single vs cleave damage, really. I’m pretty sure with those might stacks, pistol/pistol is going to hit harder than daggers, but it doesn’t cleave…

Your wife should submit a support ticket via the link here, which will get a personal response. The forums are mostly for player to player support.

(You could also submit the ticket, but since it deals with her account, and support need to identify which account is relevant, that’s just gonna slow things down.)

Lahmia.2193:

Okami.7049:

NumenorLord.6539:

FrostDraco.8306:

NumenorLord.6539:

Warcry.1596:

NumenorLord.6539:

Coffietire.2783:

I find condi necro pretty boring

This is because you might have been playing it wrong. Once you team up with only condi damage dealers and at least 2 more necros you’ll see that Epi bounce (well executed) is one of the coolest mechanics that makes you just wipe through FotM. Viper Necros might not be the highest damage output but they’re extremely functional in the right parties and rarely go get downed, even at higher level fractals.

Coffietire.2783:

I was just wondering how well a power necro is in higher tier fractals all the way to CM 100.

Power necros are underlooked. We all want them to be a thing but that’s the reality even with the GS buff. If you show up to a 100 CM pug there’s a 90% chance people will ask you to swap or vote kick you (can happen different if you’re running with guildies and/or friends).

I have never been kicked for it. I have the title and potions so beyond that people don’t care what you bring in my experiences.

Guess you’re part of that 10%

Seriously. In power compositions asking pot and title it won’t be an issue. I normally run with condi only teams (with viper necro or condi ps) and power necros are not welcome there. Seen this also happen in PUG raids where people are asking for condi necros (VG and Gorse) and a power necro joins. Guess it has to do people not reading descriptions in LFG.

I run 100 CM every single day, and never have an issue with pugs that didnt specify condi before hand.

Your made up stats are exactly that, made up.

If by stats you’re referring to statistics, then yes.

Funny thing about statistics, they’re never set in stone.

87% of all statistics are made up.

Please, if you are gonna quote someone, credit them:

87% of statistics on the Internet are made up. — Abraham Lincoln.

Moonyeti.3296:

Sarpan.9074:

Randulf.7614:

One thing to bear in mind. LS2 achievements cannot be completed on any chars first run through on each episode. A char needs to complete an episode (or poss just the relevant instance i forget) for that char to be able to qualify to attempt achievements next time.

Its annoying, but they never updated ls2 to account for this sadly

That seems odd. Have they said why they did it that way? Are there any other places in the game where that’s the case?

Season 2 was before they introduced the masteries that were tied to achievements. I bet it has something to do with this.

I would suggest that LS3 shows they learned from their mistakes. The LS2 achievements have a “do the story, do stuff, then eventually come back and polish them off” feel.

LS3 is very much “all achieves available on day one”.

vesica tempestas.1563:

ofc the issue with WOW is that it is entirely gear/stat increase orientated, thats the root cause of 99% of its problems. GW2 is not so a raid that offers normal and hard modes with perhaps specific achievements t reward those with the dedication to do hard would be entirely successful with no real drawbacks.

That’s a legitimate argument, and it’s true that WoW is “gear progression” focused. In practice, though, most of the content is essentially a gear “reset” at the start of each xpac, and doesn’t really change fast once you hit max level.

I don’t think it’s different enough to discard, and it’s kind of the best we have in terms of examples of what “sensible and easy” difficulties bring.

(Wildstar, bless their little hearts, serves as the example of what never to do: they listened to the people complaining it wasn’t hard enough and exclusive enough, made raiding super-exclusive, then found that complaining on the forums was really all those folks could actually manage. Ooops.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Sartharina.3542:

One of the problems I saw pop up with the “It should be Core Tyria Difficulty!” argument is that the Core Tyria map they’re referring to is Queensdale - You know, the zone made for level 2-10 characters with one stat, half their weapon skills, and not even traits or utilities? They’re comparing the maps’ difficulty to newbieland.

There’s an argument to be made that the first zone in an expansion should easy, to give people a chance to get in, explore, get a feel for the brave, new world, before venturing forth into the seething jungle.

I suspect that’s what many people mean when they compare it to Queensdale.

And I’d be okay with that. It’s just as easy to justify with lore.

Or, better yet, what I would have liked to see is a tiny, “intro zone” between Silverwastes and VB. You can choose to take a tutorial (and end up with basic gliding by the time you’re done) or skip right through to VB.

Put another way, a lot of people are complaining about their feeling that the transition was too abrupt, that they didn’t feel prepared. That hurts their enjoyment, regardless of whether there’s any sort of rational explanation as to why it makes sense (from lore, from game design, or otherwise).

FWIW, doing Living Story 2 sets the stage for HoT maps nicely, and is scaled somewhere between the two in difficulty, while being set in and around the wastes, and regular zones.

The fact you have to buy it separately kind of means that transition is probably more jarring for folks, but … I found it smooth, because I did go ahead and buy that up front.

Valento.9852:

There won’t be a GW3. There will be a GW2 with brand-new engine! yaaay

What even is the difference? WoW effectively has a new engine every major release, or at least, significantly upgrades their graphics components every time. Nobody really cares, except the same people who believe that DirectX 11 must be better than 9, because it’s a BIGGER NUMBER ZOMG!

FWIW, I’m doing them the hard way because I care more about the experience than the gold. So, economically it’s a loss, but in terms of turning my real world $$$ into fun for me, it’s a win.

Obviously not everyone will feel this way.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Allarius.5670:

An important distinction to make regarding the stated high level goals would be clarifying the replacement for RNG gameplay. Do you mean “X% chance on-hit(crit) apply Y effect (Z cooldown)” becomes:

1) Like RisingDusk suggests, “Apply X effect on hit (Y cooldown)”

or

2) “On weapon swap, your next X hit(s) apply Y effect”

Option 2 gives us the most counter play and predictability. There may be room for having consistent effects such as (1) “on attack, every 2 seconds”, but sigils like that will likely always be best in slot. They would have to balanced by their cooldown, which would then blur the distinction with next hit after swap. That being said, there may be some awesome sigils ideas that can use on hit mechanics we haven’t thought of (that also wouldn’t be OP)!

Another note: It is very unlikely we would ever add a form of CC to sigils.

FWIW, Evan, one of the reasons that the ranger class doesn’t really work out for me is that, pretty much, QuickDraw is the “best of the best” next-to-mandatory trait, and it requires weapon swapping on cooldown to take advantage of it.

I just … don’t enjoy that. It feels like a “don’t suck” button I have to hit in order to play the class, rather than something strategic or tactical to include usefully. (I also recognize that this is how I feel about it, and others probably feel very differently.)

So, even if an “every N seconds” sigil was literally “every 9 seconds” and thus identical to “after weapon swap”, I’d be happier with it. (…and before you say it, swapping to the same weapon type is worse than to a different one, because it feels to me even more like a “don’t suck” button. )

It isn’t especially optimised for it, no. OTOH, I play it at 2560 × 1440 without any particular issues, so you should be fine on a 27" or so display…

Rising Dusk.2408:

Orku.1546:

Today i have made VG, Gorse and entire w4 with my viper necro and we didint have any trouble with dps.

I do this very nearly every week with my guild both pre- and post-patch and you can beat any boss with a Necromancer or two no problem. The problem isn’t beating the bosses with a Necromancer; that has always been totally doable. The problem is that a Necromancer realistically doesn’t even begin to compete with other classes.

That’s it: it’s not unable to complete the content, it’s that it’s maybe not as good, or as convenient, as other options.

This leads to people saying roughly that, which leads to people leading pugs hearing “necromancer is useless”, which leads to them being excluded from things, reinforcing the belief that “you couldn’t possibly complete a raid with a necromancer!”

So, yeah, it’d be nice if perception was different, and if the class brought more utility to the table. It’s not new that having one in raid is … y’know, just fine.

That loocth very nyth to me!

Coconut.7082:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

The boss moves.

Mechanics that require the player to move, and dodge, are implemented.

Mechanics that immunity or condition clear the boss are implemented.

I fail to see a reason to do that unless the mechanics are an exact replica of some raid mechanics. I understand that you probably want to see even more “realistic DPS” on the Golem, but it really varies for every boss, so Golem numbers with random mechanics will be meaningless.

Less meaningless, though. I mean, really, what I’d like is SimulationCraft for GW2, so that we can get out of the business of using single sample Patchwerk fights as a measure of DPS at all, but moving on, something akin to these events: https://github.com/simulationcraft/simc/wiki/RaidEvents

That is, player and boss movement, invulnerability, and not present in that list, dodge required, since those are at heart the basic elements that sit behind fight mechanics in gw2.

It’s not about “perfect simulation”, or about improving the player “ability to improve / execute”, but rather, about having less terrible numbers because a punching-bag target is the worst case for understanding relative class performance.

I should probably just pull my finger out and consider slapping together a basic simulation for GW2 myself, just to be done with the idea. I’m just lazy.

edit: oh! and not “random mechanics”, but rather, “absolutely predictable mechanics”, which you can turn on and off, so they play out the same every single time. because random would be useless, but “dodge/move required every 5 seconds or 20k damage” is useful, if you apply it to different classes.

Djinn.9245:

Kerivek.5740:

I loved the final battles. They were difficult but not terribly difficult. I beat all of them on my first try without researching them at all. Ran through them again with an alt and had the same results(aside from one bugged run). It comes down to understanding mechanics and responding to them more than anything. Also don’t go in with a 1 dimensional build. In general when soloing I tend to make sure I have good ranged and melee options as well as some solid cleansing/healing/mobility.

I don’t see an issue with them being hard…I mean it is essentially a boss of the game. Why should it be easy? The only issue I have with them is they are still relatively buggy. Going in to what can be a really lengthy boss fight and dying due to a bug can be really frustrating. If you are unable to beat it try adjusting your build/strategy or round up a bit of help.

I don’t understand why people think that if someone says that a fight is “too hard” that means they are asking for it to be “easy”. There IS an entire range of difficulty between those two extremes, FYI.

I am pretty sure the answer comes down to a very simple judgment on the part of the people saying that: If they already believe that the fight is only barely a challenge, then any simplification makes it “super easy”, right?

Which is a fancy way of leading you to the conclusion, “when people respond like that, it is probably because they are very dedicated, and very skills, far beyond average, and are not aware that it is already quite difficult for most players.”

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

I think it would resolve most of the “Too Hard or Too Easy” issues since they could choose the map they wanted, and if you think about it they wouldn’t need addidtional servers because it would be the same number of players just split between hard and normal.

It would also allow players to learn the mechanics better then proceed to more difficult content if they chose.

FWIW, WoW has been a real world experiment in this area, and has shown that:

If the easier to complete content has competitive rewards, and does not lock out access to the harder content, players complain that they feel “compelled” to complete both in order to keep up.

If the easier content has competitive rewards, and does lock out the harder content, players complain that they are “forced” to do the easier version, and get no reward for the harder one. They also, in volume, do the easier content in preference to the harder content for the same reward.

If the easier content has uncompetitive, but non-zero, rewards, without lockout, we go back to the first — until you get down to the point that it’s so unrewarding that nobody wants to do the easy stuff.

If the easier content is lower reward, and does lockout the higher reward option, or is somehow incompatible with it through metagame mechanics, then players complain about how “easy mode” is toxic to the game … but, ultimately, both of them carry on, with some sniping at each other.

What that also does, though, is show that people simply prefer the easy option, when it’s available. They just don’t “skill up”, “git gud”, or any of those things. It’s a myth that people are going to react to a harder challenge being available by working hard to finally be worthy of it without, in essence, being either bribed or forced to do so.

(All of this, obviously, in sufficient volume as to make a difference. There are always gonna be people who chose to do it the hard way for the intrinsic reward, rather than for any extrinsic reason. They just don’t happen enough to justify building game systems around them.)

I understand it’s a mail carrier, which you get as a birthday reward or something?

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

because it is really difficult to answer the question: “if you have a dye in your backpack, but have not learned it, should it be ‘known’, or ‘unknown’?”

That should not even be considered an issue, an item or dye is has a status of either locked or unlocked, there is no status of “could be unlocked”. Your reading a database entry of a 1 or a 0, nothing difficult about that at all.

So… yeah. That’s true, but I’m pretty sure what players want is “let me buy things I haven’t yet got to fill out the collection”, in which case purchasing duplicates of something isn’t going to win friends, y’know?

eg: you are technically correct, but only because the request is being stated with less detail about player expectations than it could be.

OriOri.8724:

While it isn’t a boon, there are a few traits in the game that do increase your healing power under certain conditions, which would be of a similar nature to what you describe (boon that increases healing done).

Could we get an actual boon that does the same thing so you can share it with others? Yea, I don’t see why we couldn’t have that. I don’t know if we need another boon introduced to the last game (and am in favor of removing 1 or 2 for that matter) though.

Technically, I suppose, the necromancer vampirism trait is just that, so it’s not like it would be a completely new mechanic.

Perhaps just throwing it as a boon on them would get people to stop complaining about lack of group support in raids, on the forums, and all.

If the game is freezing, as in you can’t move any more, then it’s likely some sort of local computer issue. Try running with the `-repair` option, and see if that helps. Also, of course, check to make sure you don’t have a DPS meter, gemfx, or reshade style thing getting in the way.

If it is just that skills don’t respond, but you can run around, it’s likely a network problem. Unfortunately, because the Internet is more like “all the roads in your city”, “is fine” is too simple: there can be a problem on one road, while others work just fine.

Here are some instructions for figuring out where, exactly, that network problem lies: pingplotter.com/fix-your-network

Once you know where the issue is, the next step is to talk to someone who can help — which might be anet, but it might also be your ISP, or (depressingly) a third party between you and anet, so … good luck!

Check with gpu-z that your graphics card is running at 16x, and/or try reseating it, since either of those could contribute. Verify, also, that the fan is working as expected.

If you run anything like a DPS meter, gemfx or reshade, or other overlays, uninstall them and see if the problem persists.

When you hear sound, is it normal, or is it, like, looping the same fraction of sound over and over? (The former says “display problem”, the later says “something crashed”.)

You got hit by epidemic, which copied conditions around from someone hit by a lot of them, to someone who wasn’t. It’s “working as intended”, in the sense that this is what the skill does, and all.

Miss AllSunday.3795:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

If you have a program that intercepts the dx9 DLL (eg: dps meter, gemfx or reshade, etc) then make sure it is up to date (or removed) and see if the crash persists.

Hey, I dont know what program you can be talking about.
This happened when i was setting up my 3 screens to make them into 1 but i was running Guild Wars while i was changing the resolution. Before i could get to the game to change the resolution to 5760X1080, it closed and gave me the error message. I even uninstalled and re-installed but i still have the error.

If you don’t know what they are, you are not running them. Which is cool, it’s just a thing worth eliminating. Not quite an “is it switched on” question, but, y’know, sometimes that really was the problem.

pretends they never tightened a cable and fixed their internet problem when the tech suggested it

Behellagh.1468:

It’s not more prone to memory fragmentation, it’s more prone to run out of usable memory due to memory fragmentation.

I’m sorry, yes, you are exactly correct there.

Crinn.7864:

On-hit sigils definitely need to be changed. Effects with 10% proc chance on top of a ICD is just stupid RNG. cough sigil of ice cough

I think a fixed lower bound to proc is fine. A fixed upper bound to complement would be excellent, though realistically it’s unlikely to make much practical difference.

I definitely think of them as, ideally, being effectively a “bell curve” around an ideal activation time — eg: they should aim to proc approximately once every 6 seconds, but could be as frequent as every 2 seconds or as infrequent as every 10 seconds, with either extreme being less likely. Still has that “lucky streak” feel to it, but it’s also reasonably reliable.

For what value it has, though, Blizzard did find it valuable to do just that, and/or implement “bad luck protection” in which the change gradually rose to 100 percent after sufficient “nopes” from the RNG, on similar abilities over in their game.

Yeah, I had to manually click to activate the poster rather than hit the key, but it worked.

Okami.7049:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Okami.7049:

Thanks everyone! I’ve decided to stick with Force for the reliable damage boost. 5% just didn’t seem like that much to me but clearly I was looking at it the wrong way.

Oh! I’m not actually sure anyone said it, or if it was obvious to you … this only improves power damage, not condition damage. So if you use it on, say, your condition build necromancer, it’s going to be way less useful than on your power oriented whatever.

Yeah, I’m not a fan of Condi Necro. I’d rather go Sigil of Bursting for that one xD

Well, the specific class was an example. SoF works only on power damage, which means only the “initial hit” of attacks of any class, not on the conditions they leave behind.

I’m sure you did understand that correctly, but I’d rather tell you what you know than accidentally mislead someone.

The boss moves.

Mechanics that require the player to move, and dodge, are implemented.

Mechanics that immunity or condition clear the boss are implemented.

mazut.4296:

I like the CM, but also had bad experience pugging it. Its fine for premades, it sux for pugs.

…that… that… that, uh, sounds like it is working as intended, then. “The most challenging content is much easier with a coordinated group that know how to work together, than for a bunch of strangers.”

zealex.9410:

maddoctor.2738:

Malchior.5732:

That’s with all buffs and utilizing combo fields.

condi Rangers also require tons of combo fields to do their dps. Their group support is nearly non-existent too.

I’m not saying it’s the best dps but it’s not garbage as some people say it is.

no its not like that necro needs to combo field to blast or wirl or w/e to bring out his dps if for any case your field gets covered overwriten by a a light field and ethereal field of a fire field you dmg goos down massively and in a raid secnario that will happen.

Note that Reaper is not the only class to suffer if their field is overwritten with light or ethereal, but fire isn’t that big of a loss — about five percent based on the current numbers, which do suck in terms of real world reliability — compared to ice.

Eponet.4829:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

What rose said. Basically, mentally scrub out the word “fractal” and write in “dungeon without personal story attached”, and bam, you have the design path that anet followed here.

and “Raid” with “Dungeons made for 10 people.”

At least the description of the “chess” mechanic in a recent raid boss makes me think that raids are being designed with a different degree of mechanical complexity to them; while fractals and dungeons definitely have mechanics, they are not so involved.

I … kind of wouldn’t have objected if anet had avoided the word “raid”, though, because I’m pretty sure part of the forum and reddit complaining comes from people expecting “raid” to mean something very specific, and that’s not entirely what anet were after…

Djinn.9245:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

(eg: norn eat grawl)

Where is that in-game?

Text from the merchant escort in the south of Frostgorge Sound

Travelling Merchant Orthun “Oh look, Horace. Lucky us. Tonight, we feast on grawl!”

Since I noticed that, I’m pretty sure I also ran across another similar comment somewhere in Norn-land, maybe in the capital city in random dialog, but I don’t recall where well enough to find it again.

(…and yes, all we know is that one Norn suggests that they will be eating Grawl, which is different from all Norn doing it, but … don’t ruin my fun.)

This has a detailed explanation of which device, and how it works: http://dulfy.net/2016/08/09/gw2-bloodstone-sightings-current-events-guide/#Bloodstone_Creatures

For the record, I’ve most often seen successful shark kills in the Bloodtide Coast around worm and/or covington time.

FWIW, you don’t need to do world completion a second time. gw2timer.com even has a route for getting the “critical” waypoints quickly, so you can be able to get around to world bosses, etc … and then you can literally ignore completion that doesn’t happen naturally.

Donari.5237:

Huh, interesting. I wonder why they’ve never implemented this filter, then? There’ve been many, many threads asking for it over the years.

At a guess, two reasons:

First, it is hard to get consistent data about what skins you own into the TP, because of quirks around the back-end systems, and concerns about load. (Inferred from some comments about the API, backend DB load, and latency of updates.)

Second, because it is really difficult to answer the question: “if you have a dye in your backpack, but have not learned it, should it be ‘known’, or ‘unknown’?”

One technical and one non-technical thing that make it much more complex to implement this than it sounds on the surface, risk significant support load from it, and generally make it an annoying thing to work on from a dev perspective.

zealex.9410:

and that but also the fact that it gives weight to your actions and beside after using some skills in a weapon set that weapons set has no purpose so why swap back to it?

^^^^ this. There isn’t a “realistic” reason for it, just a meta-game reason: because it makes the mechanics work better, in the opinion of the GW2 design team.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I think the point of the “sheer excess of CC on some enemies” is that there are other ways to deal with CC. If I get stunlocked nowadays, I consider that my fault, not the game’s — it means I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings and that I let myself get into an area where I could be CC’d to death.

Yeah, I have adopted specific tactics with some mobs because of their use of CC or other behaviour — if I try a naive approach they will beat my by way of, essentially, superior use of their skills to my use of mine.

For example, jade bow vs watchwork in Lake Doric, it’s much more sensible to focus on ranged attacks and carefully timed “dive in, melee for a little, dive back out”, since that allows much better avoidance of both the CC it brings in close, and the support team it has.

I can absolutely see why this would be painful as you learn to adapt, though, especially with the “meta” builds being so popular, and entirely damage focused … which isn’t as viable in modern (eg: LS3) PvE as it was even in HoT.

Deadworld.6023:

Same Issue for me. Hard to believe that the Q/A teams are having a hard time reproducing this. Pretty much kills a game for me when i see bugs that have been so completely ignored and yet be actually legitimately game-breaking. The reason Anet might find themselves on the receiving end of abuse on the forums may stem from the fact that they never fix bugs and never acknowledge problems haha.

“On the forums” is probably the critical part of the statement there: their approach is that forums are essentially player to player support. For a response from them, submit a support ticket.

(They do read the forums, though. Just rarely respond.)

Huh. Interesting. FWIW, I’ve experience no such issues myself in that time.

I’d suggest trying a -repair of the client, and/or grabbing a new copy of the executable. (Also, if you have DPS meters or something, disable them and ensure it still happens.)

If you have a program that intercepts the dx9 DLL (eg: dps meter, gemfx or reshade, etc) then make sure it is up to date (or removed) and see if the crash persists.

OK. The 32-bit client is much more prone to memory fragmentation, and just the generally reduced address space, leading to crashes in memory intensive things. (eg: world bosses, etc.)

I haven’t checked if the client is linked and testing with “large memory space” enabled, but it’s tied to either 2GB or 4GB total memory in 32-bit, and usually runs around 2.5 to 3 GB active for me, so … I’m guessing the former.

FWIW, I’d probably try and find a better streaming solution, rather than a crippled gw2, here. At some point the later isn’t going to be an option — and it’s definitely not going to be with other games.

HippieJoel.9537:

sunrun.4521:

With each AMA, although it does seem like they are making progress, it’s very frustrating that they are never willing to give any suggestion of when it might be available. I know that development timeframes are notoriously difficult to estimate, but surely they know if it’ll be in the next few months, or whether it won’t even be this year. Throw us a bone.

Honestly based on the last few updates it does sound very optimistic and I think there’s a good chance that we’ll see it relatively soon.

As to why they won’t say when, I think it comes down to managing expectations.

They are also reacting to a previous policy of making promises, which led to player disappointment. Currently they prefer, to paraphrase, “to show, not to tell”, when it comes to new things.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Nah, that’s one of the weaknesses of the Skirmishing traitline. Not only is Quick Draw good – the other two traits just can’t compete.

Seems like it out-competes all the other trait lines, too, so it’s “skirmishing plus 2”. At least my feeling was confirmed, and it’s not just my impression that it’s powerful enough that nothing else beats it.

I swear I wrote something here before, but anyway: reminds me of the waypoint sound, or the sound of the asura computer screens in the home instance where their personal story happens, from the description.

I’d also check if you had a miniature out, or a gyro summoned, or something like that, OP, and see if that is responsible. (Also, legendaries, if you have any. I don’t think they have sound, but since I don’t have them all…

Okami.7049:

Thanks everyone! I’ve decided to stick with Force for the reliable damage boost. 5% just didn’t seem like that much to me but clearly I was looking at it the wrong way.

Oh! I’m not actually sure anyone said it, or if it was obvious to you … this only improves power damage, not condition damage. So if you use it on, say, your condition build necromancer, it’s going to be way less useful than on your power oriented whatever.

What rose said. Basically, mentally scrub out the word “fractal” and write in “dungeon without personal story attached”, and bam, you have the design path that anet followed here.