Guild Wars 2

Having it be account bound would be nice. That way if your weapon gets nerfed to oblivion for one class, you could then just use it on another character.

If he’s using P/D and using lots of stealth, then he is a Condition Damage spec. His “out of stealth” attack fires the pistol several times and stacks a lot of bleeds. The rest of his weapon skills don’t do Condition damage besides Pistol1 and the out of stealth Pistol1 attacks, so he will probably be using all of his Initiative to stealth, or perhaps to help him kite (P/D 3 teleports away, D4 is a cripple).

After reading the OP I had to check the date to make sure it wasn’t myself you were fighting. I’m a defensive D/P thief though, relying less on invisibility and relying more on Weakness/Blind/Regeneration to reduce incoming damage.

I disagree Weindrasi. The most important thing in Charr culture is victory, not advancing certain political ideologies, but winning and being the best.

If the Flame Legion sees that females can be suitable soldiers and makes for a more powerful army, then by the most important value to Charr will dictate that the most powerful option should be pursued. Victory for the Charr, if there are female Charr suitable for combat then that will help Charr maintain its superiority over rivals.

Likewise, if Blood/Ash/Iron see that “mutilating their own bodies”, and sacrifice will make Charr more powerful then they will pursue that…. besides, Charr already are very accustom to sacrifice and mutilation (they are very warlike, ignoring sacrifice and mutilation is just glosing over the messy parts of war). Enslaving non-Charr, well why would the Charr be opposed to that?… hell, in the personal story you recruit meat shields from the lesser races, and in Iron Marches there is even a heart quest where you whip (Charr) slaves in a mine.

The Charr are more alike than you might think. “Victory, at any cost”.

Also funny that you bring up Taliban and the United States as an example of how Charr cannot unite CIA equipped and trained Al Qaeda, which played a large part in the Taliban, as well as currently fighting on the USA's side in Libya/Syria/etc.. many Taliban/Al Qaeda who fought US in Afghanistan/Pakistan are fighting alongside US interests in North Africa and Middle East

That character was a Mesmer back in the beta. Made his invisibility and all that more fitting as well.

Rhysati.4932:

Roles: I’m a huge fan of playing a tank, healer, or support class. DPS bores the snot out of me in games. Unfortunately, dps seems to be the main focus of every single class. I do like that everyone gets at least some sort of heals, boons, conditions, etc to help out with, but it’s lacking in terms of the direct contributions I would like to see. I want to play a healer or a tank. Or I want to play someone focused on boons and conditions to help my team. As it stands, you can’t really do those things as an actual role. For some, this is great, for others: not so much.

Guessing this is mostly inexperience. If you want to make a tank/support/healer, then go for it. I have a Guardian that is amazing at tanking and support, I chose to focus more on damage rather than healing, but still have plenty of self healing. A friend of mine has a full tank/support/healing Warrior. Greater knowledge of hate/aggro mechanics for PvE, or PvP psychology and he is able to direct a whole lot of the enemy`s attention to him. That Warrior shouts out bigger AoE heals than my Mesmer has as a personal heal, and has more AoE condition removal than my Mesmer has in personal condition removal. Plenty of time in PvP or PvE, you hear guildies asking this Warrior to come throw down a few heals for them, or to tank this enemy while we do that, etc.

Saying that there are no roles is just showing your inexperience… not that that is a bad thing, it is a learning experience. Back to my mention of D&D, the roles in GW2 is almost like the roles in D&D, you can have whatever kind of party composition you want, noobs will assume that DPR (dmg per round) is the only way to do things… but that kind of thinking is just barely scratching the surface of the diversity of builds and playstyles.

The roles are still there, but they are explicitly needed. However having a variety of roles really helps out. When my guild first started out in GW2, the guild was almost entirely Warriors because ``5 warriors is all you need, get rid of that Mesmer and Guardian and actually contribute to the dungeon like the rest of us DPS Warriors``. After guildies started diversifying their chosen classes, and building for different roles than simply DPS, running dungeons became so much easier, faster, and safer.

I haven’t gotten a chance to try out Toypocalypse yet… but sounds a lot like how points are rewarded in WvW and sPvP… ie, they incentivise short sighted people to play poorly.

Why try to win the game and potentially get 10x glory, when you can just stand and cap this one point with the entire team to get a guaranteed 1x glory right now? Why stay on the siege weapons to help ensure the capture of that keep and be lucky if you get a Bronze meddle, when you can just jump off your post and stand in the circle to get a “guaranteed” Gold meddle (you’re less likely to even take the keep in the first place when all your siege operators jump off their posts).

Changes to the point rewards in Toypocalypse can wait until they fix the incentives for WvW and sPvP…. huh…

Stealth and Clone destroy noobs and people who refuse to L2P.

Noobs, maybe not so much, but the people who refuse to L2P just pollute forums with whining for nerfs. They refuse to learn the basics of the Mesmer, they lose to the Mesmer because they don’t know the basics in fighting one, and then they declare the Mesmer OP because nothing could possibly be their own fault, it is always someone else’s fault.

A line of Charr syncing up their /dance just out of range of the enemy artillery before charging in… only use for the Charr /dance.

The Flame Legion is just one of the Four main Legions. The other three only have peace with each other due to having a common enemy.

If the Flame Legion suddenly considers the Dragons to be a threat, or if the other three legions (or even one or two) decide that the other legions, humans or w/e are a threat then they could very well side with the Flame Legion.

If anything unites the Legions, I would assume it would either be the Flame Legion considering the Dragons a threat, or if the other Legions feel that they no longer want Vigil/Pact forces romping around Charr lands whenever they want. Invaders into Charr lands is what united the legions before, and now we have plenty of non-Charr interfering in Charr lands and Charr affairs.

Being a proud, militaristic race that values sovereignty… having foreign soldiers in their lands, and foreign powers interfering in Charr sovereignty… that stuff could very well unite the Legions again.

However, I’d have difficulty seeing the Iron Legion go along with it, at least the Iron Legion under leadership of Smodur… seeing as how he seems to be very much for having foreign troops involved in Charr affairs, having peace with humans, and trying to ignore Charr history and “move forward”.

If there was any siding with the Flame Legion, I’d think that Iron would be opposed, and it would be more of a shift towards a Blood/Ash/Flame vs Iron thing.

Mister Mustard.7203:

[paraphrased: it is easy for a low skill thief to defeat anther low skilled player]

And any low skill player can get easy kills with a Noob-tube in any FPS. It doesn’t mean that an underslung grenade launcher is the best weapon in the game.

Any time low skilled players get together, the glass cannon has a huge advantage.

Should classes be balanced around the worst skill players? No, that would be dumbing down the game. There are plenty of other games that are dumbed down that would be more suitable for people who refuse to L2P.

A thief going invisible for a backstab is usually fairly predictable. Personally I enjoy fighting BS thieves because watching them go invisible, then swinging my weapons progressing my auto attack chain, then have the thief become visible laying on the ground is great fun.

Massively

Roles are horribly underexplained and unclear

That author must absolutely hate Dungeons and Dragons with a fiery passion.

Having the freedom to figure out your own builds and styles is one of the things that I enjoy the most about this game. And for those that dislike making their own builds and figuring out what role they should play, they can just look at forums and copy other people’s builds and play styles.

Area flow is problematic

This entire section was whining about the lack of hand holding. Whatever happened to exploring for the sake of exploring? If you really need to have to hand held so much, maybe video games aren’t what you should be doing as a pass time. Just watch tv or movies, that way you don’t even have to provide any input to advance the story.

Crafting is a freaking mess

Doesn’t seem to understand the concept that you can trade on the Trading Post, or that certain enemies have certain loot tables. I thought certain enemies having certain loot tables was fairly common knowledge as it is a fairly common practice in games. As for crafting taking a while, well ok sure I don’t enjoy grind either, but I don’ think these guys are going to be suggesting to do away with levels because that’s not what “the other guys” do.

The story is weak

I think this is a commonly held belief. Yup, the 1-20 story is great, the 20-40 is a different episode… also good, but doesn’t really seem to be connected to the previous part. And the rest of the story is “Trahearne saves the world while whining the entire time”.

Karizee.8076:

Since you do insist on going in alone when your enemies are controlling the puzzle, you may want to take advantage of the Mystic Fountains located there. They grant 5 minutes of Invisibility which should be enough to get through the puzzle or the major portion of it.

Actually the three Mystic Fountains provide enough time to complete the entire Jumping Puzzle while invisible. I’ve used the Mystic Fountains to initiate flank charges on people camping the arena with siege on several occasions. Other times I might just walk right past them if I feel there are too many of them… well, walk right past them to grab the ori and the chest, then come back to kill as many as I can.

What’s next, holding all Keeps in Eternal Battlegrounds is griefing as well?

Don’t come into a PvP zone if you don’t want to PvP.

Stop trying to ruin our game type.

Runcore.5107:

I have one good solution for you. Stop playing online games and go play tetris.

“Nerf S and Z Tetris pieces! Nerf the fall rates!!”

These people are whiners with entitlement issues. They are going to whine just as much in whatever they do in life. Nothing is ever their own fault, it is always something else, always some other excuse.

I personally use D/P almost exclusively. However my build might be a little weird though.

I have a fairly tanky/support build, which is able to give out tons and tons of Poison/Weakness, as well as tons of Regeneration, in addition to extra dodging, blinds, interrupts, and boon removal (I main a Mesmer and love Arcane Thievery, so Bountiful Thief was one of the big reasons why I liked Thief).

@bomber

Shadow Shot does have a brief root after the gap closer. It is unfortunate, however the nice thing is that it is just one of many gap closers you have as a D/P thief. Steal and Heartseaker being the other ones you have for sure, and you can always bring more gap closers (SB5, Shadowstep, only use these if you really need the gap closing as they are much better used defensively). Also that root isn’t very long, I don’t think I’ve actually missed the followup attack in using Shadow Shot due to my target walking away.

I spend most of my initiative on the Blinding Powder + Heartseeker combo (as stealthing gives my build ~7 seconds of Regeneration). I always leave enough initiative for a couple Headshots though (the Mesmer in me absolutely loves the on demand Daze). As my build actually really likes every part of the auto-attack chain, I don’t find that initiative is much of an issue for me.

Being a more tanky Thief, I don’t usually have a problem with just walking up to people, especially if approaching from a blind spot. Although I could see how this wouldn’t be that great of a way to approach for a less durable Thief. But yeah the Blinding Powder + HS is nice, as the enemy will be trying to get away from the BP AoE, and your logical followup happens to be a medium range gap closer (gap closer that gives stealth which would be very handy for Backstab Thieves).

As for the utilities I use (if you are interested), I use Shadow Step (I love close range teleport stunbreakers) which also gives condition removal, Spider Venom (applies like 40 seconds of poison and 20 seconds of Weakness for my build, which I like to do after I see my target use up their condition removal, or hit several targets to spread out the debuffs), and Shadow Refuge (because it seems brokenly good).

The biggest reason for why I use D/P though is because it fits my specific build very well. The auto attack chain has a high volume of attacks, returns endurance and gives several seconds of poison/weakness. HS (leap) and SS are both decent gap closers. Pistol4 for the Daze and Pistol5 for the Blind/combo field.

Again my build might be a little weird, so wait for other people’s opinion on D/P to better inform yourself. But that’s just a little information I can provide for your questions.

Liewec.2896:

i had 13k hp (guardian HP sucks) i took 21k bleeding dmg… and i’m dead, thanks to the magic of 3 3 3 3 3 3…

You built yourself to be weak against condition damage (low HP), and you complain about condition damage. And no, complaining about being a low HP pool class isn’t a valid excuse (especially when complaining about another class that also has a low HP pool). I find that playing any class with less than 15k HP is painful, but you can’t pretend that you are a tank and you only have 13k HP. That HP total is glass. Try getting up to at least 15k HP, I find that 15k HP is more than enough for my Guardian (I make up for the still low HP with tons of self healing, tons of armour, tons of boons, and tons of condition removal).

Archonis.7249:

I swear, you never see this kitten in the other profession’s forums.

Don’t worry, we Mesmers get this all the time on our sub-forum as well. I think it is more that the Mesmers and Thieves aren’t the most straight forward classes, therefore for people who refuse to L2P, these two classes seem imba.

Yes the Mystic Fountains in the JP give 5 minutes of stealth.

Don’t count on the Ascalonian fractal Deceptive Evasion being fixed anytime soon. Path 3 (when you turn into ghosts) of Ascalonion Catacombs has the exact same issue and hasn’t been fixed.

ophidic.1279:

Have you seen GW1 holiday quests? You go, fight some stuff, after 3 or 4 sections which are incredibly easy, you got everything to “do” all the event stuff, and make a few candy cane weapons. NO ONE complained that it was too easy.

Sounds pretty forgettable and boring. Why would anyone want to do that for any reason but getting the reward?

To the people who like Jumping Puzzles, if Anet was to dumb them down to make them accessible to everyone, then that would be removing our fun. The Wintersday puzzle was already a big let down for those of us that loved the Mad King’s Clocktower. Changing the difficulty of the puzzle is already a give and take, and this holiday JP has already taken fun away from those that love Jumping Puzzles and given it to those that don’t like Jumping Puzzles as much.

If they are just going to dumb down the JP’s then they might as well just stop making them for holiday events. The people who like Jumping Puzzles will find them too easy and boring, and the people who dislike JPs already dislike JPs from the very start. Why should the difficulty be targeted to people who dislike the concept of the activity in the first place?.. that’s just going to make no one happy.

I think it’s fine that they use gambling to earn some extra money. The people parting with their money for gambling are doing so voluntarily, no one is forcing them. They are deriving pleasure from the act of gambling itself, as they are risk loving.

What I’d like to see is more options for those of us that are more risk adverse and do not participate in gambling (either for moral reasons, or we know too much statistics to ever want to gamble).

loneknight.8425:

I believe it is bugged, but it’s a good thing. Going against toy zerg (soldiers & ventari) is such a rush

My group had that happen to us as well. First time I’ve seen someone die in that dungeon that wasn’t just carelessly falling off the upper level. Broke combat, equipped my Feedback bubble as a Mesmer, and tore those toys apart haha.

It was kind of annoying when we had to clear the plant turrets, then do so again.. but the rest of the bugs just added a bit more excitement.

I’m one of the ones that was sort of expecting a Mad King Clocktower level of difficulty, finished the Wintersday puzzle on the third try, was disappointed. I found this little area, got excited (Yes! This is the real puzzle! Oh you sneaky Anet!)… but then I was disappointed again to find nothing but invisible walls.

Bregah.7365:

(IE, not being able to see my own character) is easily the most annoying part of this and the Halloween puzzle.

It is kind of funny, because Charr and Norn, the two races who have complaints directed to over this issue (“can’t see anything because these charr and norn are in the way!”), and the two races who are probably best suited for doing jumping puzzles blind due to all the practice those players have had. We big guys are more than used to the camera not giving us an easy time…. but then during these festive JP’s we get to share that experience with all of you little people <3

Kantankerus.6081:

Surbrus: I understand what you are saying and none of your points are without merit but it comes off a bit too elitist for my taste.

Perhaps it might come off as a bit elitist, but really I think this would be the best way to please the most people. As I said, it wouldn’t be like it is gating content, it’s not like someone is never going to see large areas of the game simply because they are not skilled enough or have the time to devote… and it also adds a very superficial reward for those that do like this part of the game.

And yeah sure this might not be how MMO’s are supposed to be, but again I’m not coming from an MMO background so I’m especially confused by why the game has to follow certain guidelines, and not follow guidelines that are more popular in other genres.

But is it really elitist to want a challenge? Many people absolutely loved the Clocktower because of the level of challenge. I’ll probably always remember that JP… just as I will always remember the BWE1 events and skill challenges (actually challenging RIP BWE1 levels of challenge, especially you, Flame Shaman. The Wintersday JP on the other hand, that will mot definitely be forgotten as there simply was no challenge for many people. Dumbing down the JP may allow a different group to enjoy it, but it also robs another group of their enjoyment… whether it is a net gain or loss in enjoyment is up for debate.

The thing that really strikes me with your concept, though, is the fact that it’s not like that with any of the other achievements in the game…it’s against the grain of what has already been established. In fact, specifically because of this, I seriously doubt we’ll see it, but I’ve been proven wrong more than once.

You have a point there. However many of these achievements require what could be literally years of devoted playing. I know that no matter how much I play the game (I hope to play it for a good long time), that I am never going to be able to get all these achievements. Is it really that bad if there are limited time achievements that not everyone can get due to skill requirements? Again it is not gating content, it is simply the prestige of the title and the achievement… the prestige that is lost if it is simply a participation meddle. Why couldn’t we have both participation meddles, and skill demanding achievements side by side?.. or having achievements/titles that are more prestigious in addition to participation achievements/titles?

I would also argue that skill progression is largely a measure of time, not something separate like many like to convince themselves of. Sure, the slope of gain is a bit different from person to person but in the end time is the majority stake holder in skill, whether that time was spent in GW2 or Super Mario Brothers.

I would argue that the slope of gaining skill is a lot more important than the maximum level, especially so for those that cannot devote large amounts of time to an activity.

tl;dr: I still believe that achievements and titles are the best place to put skill restrictions on, as it doesn’t actually deny those with less skill/time of content, yet provides prestige for those that are able… and the those titles/achievements aren’t simply “do x activity y times where y is >1000”, those kind of titles and achievements lose their prestige because one can just “grind” to it.

That’s exactly my plan for my Charr Thief, T3 chest, and still searching far and wide for the rest of the outfit.. especially the pants. The unfortunate part about medium pants is that since everything is a trenchcoat, the tail isn’t really considered for any of them. If the tail was at least considered for the trenchcoat itself it might not be that bad… rather than all that clipping.

Kantankerus: Is having goals that may be unattainable for some really that bad? Yes sure there are many people like you that want to go for those achievements, but there is also a group of people that want achievements that are more prestigious than a time sink or badge of participation.

IMO achievements and titles should be where most of the skill gating comes into play. No one is locked out of any content due to much time or skill requirements, its just an arbitrary number and arbitrary title that people would miss out on. The point of achievements are something you work towards by bettering yourself… not simply sinking a bunch of time into it. Maybe I am bias as I don’t come from an MMO background, but it just feels so dumbed down to have “E for effort” equal to an “A+ excellent job”… it just seems like modern entitlement issues.

RedOak: The problem is, allowing people to go as slowly as they want, and having short wait times are mutually exclusive… unless the puzzle is completely instanced for a single player, or the puzzle is completely static… as with almost every JP in the game.

Also if the different difficulties were of the same puzzle, with time being a large factor then that would simply remove a lot of the fun/excitement/prestige for those that are good at the jumping.

isendel.5049:

mount

The only real point for a mount has is to cross large boring landscapes. Rather than make large boring landscapes, the developers can simply make smaller, more detailed landscapes. This is what Anet decided to do. Mounts do not belong in this game, if the developers wanted to make a smaller world, they would just do so, rather than put some arbitrary restriction on breezing through boring content.

Every class (guardians too, unlike someone has stated before) can have at the very least a permanent +25%, while many classes can have a permanent +33%. Mesmer hasn’t and it really needs it.

I just checked my Guardian to see if it was an update that slipped by me, and nope, Guardian does not have any permanent +25% move speed ability. Do you mean a lot of swiftness up time perhaps?.. even then the Guardian has to build for that…. same as the Mesmer. My Mesmer has over 90% uptime on swiftness because I built for it, my guardian can only have a bit more than 50% uptime on swiftness if I devote two utility slots to shouts that give swiftness, if using a Staff align my Staff3 two different shouts at certain exact times (when staff3 is used while you already have swiftness, it only gives +1 second of swiftness duration), then I could probably get about 80% swiftness uptime.

There is a difference between slotting a single utility (+25% movement classes), clicking a few buttons whenever they are off cool down (warrior, ranger), and having to devote your build, and use abilities at certain moments to maintaining high swiftness uptime (Mesmer and Guardian). Guardian is very much in the same scenario as Mesmer, arguably worse.

Poplolita.2638:

[tangent]

It could be argued that pretty much any class can use line of sight to their advantage. I know I do on any class I play. And if you are expecting Phantasms to hold their own while the Mesmer plays Ring around the Rosy, then sorry, they won’t. A better Ring around the Rosy class would probably be Necromancer using Marks, targeted Wells, and maybe minions. Either way, the tangent is getting further and further away from the topic of the thread.

Also, mock = laugh, again splitting hairs.

Lol ok so this tangent was basically a generic “Mesmers are OP” thing?… or “some people whine because they want to be OP” thing? Still don’t see what this has to do with a discussion about +25% move speed signets and/or perma swiftness.

As for “you are making this up as you go along”, I admit that I did mix up psykles’s post and yours. He was going on about how Mass Invisibility and Staff2 are stunbreakers, and how 25% move speed doesn’t help avoid combats you should avoid, etc. However that statement still applies for your satirical post, in that you basically could have “signed” it as any class and it would have made just as much sense… as well as implying that having a gap closer makes Mesmers unique and therefore should be slower… personally I can’t think of a class that lacks a gap closer, please inform me if I am incorrect here.

And come on, saying that satire isn’t a joke is splitting hairs, both concepts highly related.

Anyways, I dislike derailing threads with useless posts. Back to the topic (ironically the thing that we appear in agreement with): perma swiftness and +25% move speed signets are hurting the diversity of builds, therefore not only is the OP’s idea at best patchwork fix, but the entire idea of many classes having +25% move speed signets, as well as perma swiftness in the first place is bad for the game. That’s one of the reasons why we don’t have mounts in this game, because effectively they are useless and serve no real purpose other than contributing into some movement speed arms race…. which is almost as pointless as a gear treadmill.

@digitz

Sounds like you would have absolutely hated the Clocktower.
1. The Clocktower had more waiting (longer puzzle, with a substantial skill gate near the start)
2. Only one path, whereas the Wintersday JP is split into multiple starting paths, the Clocktower had everyone together right at the start… which also contributed to the skill gate at the start… which would contribute to the longer wait times for those that hadn’t mastered the first section of the JP.

However, these are some of the factors that many, many people (myself included) loved about the Clocktower. Did you notice how many people, especially Charr and Norn were stripping down to nothing in the Winter JP? That was much, much more important in the Clocktower as there were a lot more distractions about. That was also part of the fun. Seeing as how the Clocktower didn’t have a waiting room activity (watching others doing the JP, or snowball fight), the wait room was a lot more social (in my experience) with a lot more joking around and tips on the JP (including demands for Charr and Norn strippers and associated joking).

Gilosean.3805:

You think they’re terrible. Lots of other people think they’re great. Some people think they’re the best part of the game. Your ‘feedback’ is just as bad as someone saying they should take out WvW, PvP tournaments or the PvE world.

Exactly, Ravbek’s post was pretty much the definition of “stop liking what I don’t like”.

Kantankerus.6081:

Please don’t tie exclusive achievements to harder difficulties, it’s a little too exclusive…better loot seems like a more reasonable reward if you differentiate things in the future.

I’d have to disagree here. exclusive achievements are probably the best rewards for skill gating content. That way everyone is on more even footing when it comes to rewards, except the people that are good at jumping puzzles get an achievement or title that says that they are good at jumping puzzles. It is nice that people that aren’t as good at JP’s aren’t excluded entirely, but for those of us that really, really like challenging JP’s it really cheapens the entire thing.

And its not like you even have to complete the JP for the Wintersday related title, as you only have to complete 12 of 14 achievements I believe. That’s already giving people some wiggle room if they don’t want/can’t do everything but they still want a title that says that they did.

The nice thing about titles is that it is so minor a reward, but it can be fairly prestigious. It is not excluding people from having cool skins, or excluding them from rewards of in game wealth… all it is, is a few letters put together to signify that you’ve completed something. If everyone is given the title for just participating, then it isn’t nearly as prestigious.

Maybe a better idea would be to have different tiers of holiday titles. One could be more or a participation meddle, and another could be reserved for the more exclusive, difficult content… just prefix the title with “Apprentice/Adept/Master” or something.

Ah ok, so it was all just a misunderstanding? Good to hear more agreement on how all these +25% move speed and perma swiftness are hurting the diversity of builds, because it really does limit the variety you see. When we only have such limited runes and utilities, giving up more of these fun and interesting runes/abilities for what’s basically a tax in the name of move speed (to catch up to everyone else) is just plain old boring.

Also, buffing some classes move speed is relatively a nerf to other class’ move speed…. and weren’t Mesmers and Guardians already slow enough?… why make those classes even slower? This also makes it even more painful for non-80’s, who don’t yet have the required traits/utilities/runes so that they have enough move speed to tag along with others that are already at max level with their build. The recent +25% move speed signet buffs don’t actually help the classes that received them, they just hurt everyone else that didn’t receive them (as well as hurt the classes that did receive the buffs, but the players wanted to use something other than a boring passive).

This jumping puzzle was ok. But I was really hoping to see another exciting and challenging jumping puzzle like the Mad King’s Clocktower… now that one was amazing (finished Wintersday JP on the 3rd try, took 2 hours to do Clocktower).

Both special event JP’s have time limits, they were presented in vastly different ways. Wintersday puzzle has your HP tick down (boring). Clocktower had boiling goo raising, skeletal hands grasping, you could see your fellow players being swallowed up as they fell behind in time (very exciting). Also the music plays a roll in the excitement.

After arriving in the room with the chest for the Winter JP, I noticed more jumps that seemed to go up further. I got excited and thought, “Ahhh sneaky Anet! That was just the beginner JP and this is leading to the real one!!”… then I was disappointed to find out that it was simply some jumps up to a higher vantage point with invisible walls, nothing else.

Poplolita.2638:

I’m curious to know what words that I put in your “mouth” you’re talking about?

You implied that I was demanding +25% move speed for Mesmers, when I specifically stated that it would be best to remove all perma-swiftness ability for all classes, in that very post you replied to. The “words you put in my mouth” were the exact opposite of what I was saying.

{Quote} Having a perception of hurt feelings {Quote}

May I ask you a question? Where did this come from? You guys are making me go off-topic with your 1 cent psychology for tool. I’m just going to ignore you at this point like with Jsvkki. In other word, im going to report this thread.

That came from the exact same, short post I was replying to (the “words in people’s mouths” post).

your post is full of hostility
unfriendly manner

I guess calling out the “perception of hurt feelings” was fairly accurate, seeing as how you are wasting your time threatening to report over frivolous complaints.

Anyways, stop, enough tangents. I don’t see any arguments against scrapping perma swiftness and +25% move speed abilities for classes. The point that I and others have already made is that these abilities reduce the number of viable builds, as since everyone “needs” move speed in WvW, everyone’s builds are converging to accommodate perma swiftness into their builds. There would be a larger build variety if move speed boosting abilities were restricted.

Having a perception of hurt feelings doesn’t justify putting words in people’s mouths. I suggest you stop.

The game shouldn’t be balanced around how easy it is to kill noobs. Stop acting like Mesmer clones are some godly ability. They confound noobs who don’t understand the class, as well as people who refuse to learn about the class. They also buy you a little bit of time versus non-noobs as it will take a moment to see which Mesmer has an offhand, is attacking faster, and actually moving. Even Mesmers that act like clones in the hopes that it will trick people can’t fool people who actually have experience playing or fighting against Mesmers.

Clones are infinity better for body blocking projectiles than they are at tricking a non-noob player. Noobs are going to lose against an experienced player no matter which class happens to be in the fight. Stop arguing that noob-stomping makes one class over powered over others.

psykles.1573:

Blinking away is an option.
Staff #2 is another.

Life is easy when you roll with staff, blink, decoy, mirror images and mass invis.
All are short cooldowns.
They all break stuns, some create clones.
2 of them even stealth you and drop target.
On top of all that, the more illusions i have up, the faster I move.
It’s all there already but people are choosing to either ignore it, or not use it.

I’ve been 100-0’d by thieves before I could react.
Literally dead in 2 seconds because I was tired and lazy.
How would even a 50% permanent speed increase have saved me there ?

Using sPvP balance as a justification for balance in the rest of the game is a bad argument. SPvP and the rest of the game already have plenty of different balance decisions worked into them, so basing your argument on sPvP balance is just wasting everyone’s time here discussing it. Yes you should raise the point of sPvP balance, but leave it at “the skills should be balanced differently for the different game types”.

Also, you are exaggerating and/or using disinformation in that post (Mass invis does not have a short cool down for a target drop/invis, both MI and Staff2 don’t break stun, and non of those abilities will help outrun a +25% movespeed player in WvW). And if you can’t see how increased move speed out of combat cannot prevent you from being blown up by a glass cannon Thief, then I’ll just suggest being more aware of your surroundings… or I’ll just assume you are talking 100% about sPvP, which is basically just a tangent that you keep inserting into this thread.

And Poplolita, you look like you are making this up as you go along. Your first post ITT was entirely useless, and if you didn’t sign it as “Mesmers”, no one would have known what your joke was even talking about.

Ironvos.9014:

Maybe everyone should just have his perma swiftness removed.
This arms race will never stop otherwise.
There is already a difference in movement speed between combat and non combat.

This is basically my opinion. This move-speed-arms-race is bad because it is limiting builds. I used to think that Runes of the Centaur with Mirror was very useful, but now it is even more important now that everyone else is getting faster. My Guardian also has his move speed lowered relative to other classes, and my “no Signet of Shadows” Thief is looking like he’ll have to align his utilities to be more like everyone else’s utilities so as not to be left behind.

RockonHarder.7235:

IF you see a mezmer run at the group CC him really fast. stop the Bomb before it even happens.

Why not just AoE and CC the portal and get a bunch of easy kills? That way you can kill off a lot of your enemies, allowing you to make a counter push against a lot fewer enemies.

TrashHunterz.4751:

Immediatly start aoeing and placing cc on the portal. If u manage to do that with enough people they wil die real fast.

Well to be fair, there are plenty of people throwing out the phrase “just delete my class”.

The balance changes are often nonsensical.

At the current trajectory of nerfs/buffs that the Mesmer is getting, the Mesmer class will simply have a portal and Mindwrack. Every patch it seems we get nerfs to everything but Shatter builds… which keep getting buffed, and nonsensical changes to Portal, which don’t even address any perceived issues with the skill in the first place.

Ahhh ok that sounds better then. It isn’t too powerful if you abuse it.

It works similarly to the Mesmer’s Portal skill, although the 90 second cool down on the Portal makes any “fix” to switching skills during their dual-skill state deplorable… but that is moreso an issue with the Mesmer’s portal being way too long of a cool down, rather than the idea that this issue should be fixed.

What I like least about this sort of thing is that it makes optimal play very annoying. Whether you are juggling utilities or juggling weapons with your inventory open while out of combat, it is just not fun game play. If you don’t use Shadowstep in your build, then it is optimal to be always using this trick every 50 seconds when out of combat to increase your move speed. Just like other classes opening up their inventories and swapping weapons for swiftness or other movement skills… it is optimal but makes the game less fun.

If you swap it for another skill, then swap back… is there a cool down? If not you could Shadowsteap 1200 range, swap twice, Shadowsteap 1200 range, swap twice, ad infinitum. I could see how this could be an incredibly imbalanced exploit if someone had a macro do this for them.

Sure you have to be out of combat… but that would make the Thief’s out of combat speed approaching the speed at which a macro could click buttons. Speaking of teleporting across the map instantly… is this how teleporting bots work?

I’m pretty much addicted to Shadowstep/Blink/Lightning Flash. I love those skills so much.

As for the difficulty in using the skill as a stun breaker: yes, it is a L2P thing. After enough practice with the skill, it is amazing as a stun breaker. For the longest time I was having a lot of difficulty with these type of stunbreakers, but after using them for so long, I got much more used to them.

Being able to reposition yourself in addition to breaking stun is amazing. Also, getting launched off a fatal cliff?… well just stun break/teleport back to where you want to be… its such a rush when you pull it off. The teleport stun breaking skills might demand a bit more skill to utilize, but they reward you greatly for that skill. Just keep using it as a stunbreaker, and when you finally get comfortable with the skill it will feel so worth it.

I only have a few weeks experience with the Thief, however a “tanky” build is exactly what I am going for.

I have 15 in Deadly arts, giving me Lotus Poison (inflict Weakness on Poison), combined with the sigil that increases Weakness duration gives inflicted Weakness +25% duration. With a mainhand Dagger that is 3.75 seconds of Weakness on each auto attack chain (in addition to bonus Endurance from the second part of the chain). The Shortbow4 poison AoE stacks a lot of Weakness (SB2 blast finishers for more Weakness stacking). Shadow Protector (5 seconds of Regen when going into stealth) is very important.

Pistol offhand gives an at will interrupt (as a Mesmer main, I am extremely jealous of the Thief’s Pistol4). Pistol 5 is great for blinds, and gives the smoke combo field for Heartseaker-ing into stealth.

Armour runes are full Dwayna runes. Giving healing, +20% Regen duration (25% boon duration from traits), and 5 seconds of Regen when using a heal skill. This when combined with Shadow Protector and all the +boon duration gives 20 seconds of Regeneration when using the Hide in Shadows heal skill… also providing ~7 seconds of Regen to nearby allies. Pain Response (Acrobatics trait) gives about 14 seconds of Regen pretty much every 45 seconds (in addition to clearing DoT’s).

As for gear, I’m using pretty much full Clerics, using a Knights jewel (for sPvP) giving me a extra little bit of Vitality, bringing my HP pool up to 14.5K.

The 20 in Trickery I went for could probably be better spent elsewhere if you wanted to be more tanky… it’s just a personal preference for me (Bountiful Thief and Pistol4; as a Mesmer main player, these two are the biggest reason why I made a Thief, I love them so much).

As for Utilities I went for Shadowstep (personal bias to teleport utilities, although the condition clearing is handy as well), Spider Venom (on demand Poison/Weakness; about 20 seconds of Weakness when it all gets stacked together), and Shadow Refuge (I use it simply for a Dark field and it’s healing often). Daggerstorm for elite (whirl finisher + reflect is nice).

…

tl;dr:
High toughness, moderate HP (for a Thief), almost constant Regeneration (with about 1k healing power), and almost constant Weakness on the enemy. It has been working very well as a “tanky” build for me. For a “tanky” Thief build, it uses a surprisingly low amount of Blind.

My build probably could be improved, as I’ve only been playing Thief heavily for the past few weeks…. although this build has made Thief overtake my other classes as most played in sPvP… at the very least I am enjoying the build a great deal.

Unfortunately the your Legion and Sire story lines end at level 20. Unfortunate since those were some of my favourite parts of the personal story. After level 20 when everyone’s personal stories start to merge, your story gets very un-Charr-ish.

Too bad, I was really looking forward to what happened in all three of the Sire story lines. Vallus has super secret stuff for you to find out about, the Flame Shaman father has his safety still in danger, any one of the four legions would probably love to kill him, and the Loyal Sire wtf where's my treasure hunt!!.

I’ve only done the Gladum story line outside of beta though, so mmmmaaaaayyyyybe the other story lines add bonus missions?

As for Charr Mesmers, I can’t remember which personal story mission it was, but back in the Beta when I was sampling all the personal story options, there was one mission with a Flame Legion Mesmer acting as the leader of the Flame Legion group in that mission. He used slightly different spells, like what appeared like some sort of phantasmal riflemen rather than Phantasmal Duellists, and he didn’t seem to use clones. Anyone else recall this guy?

And I don’t know for certain, but I heard that Charr Mesmers were not an uncommon sight in GW1.

Yup, /threaten is definitely the emote that I use the most.

I generally use it when enemies run away, or in similar situations to what the OP described, when you are here to defend something and they want to take it from you.

I always kind of chuckle when I use it against a large group of enemies, thinking I have more support than I actually do… then end up having to run away with my tail between my legs when the large group of enemies charges me.

Being able to get those extra harvests is a reward for doing well in WvW, and happens fairly frequently. Even if your server is pretty much getting shut out you will still see that WvW related harvesting crit every now and then towards the end of the WvW match.

But not receiving a plant at all is rather strange. Are you sure you didn’t just miss it, and you actually did receive a carrot the first time as well? If so this changes my understanding of loot tables for gathering.

“Instead”? I was to my understanding (and experience) that unidentified dye/dandelion is the loot that you receive in addition to the plant. The dye/dandelion is a one of the other thing, but I have never seen or heard of the dye and the carrot/etc being a one of the other thing.

With the advent of Ascended gear, and the Great Legendary Precursor Lottery, as well as the killing off of the bots, fine crafting materials skyrocketed in price. Since fine crafting materials have gone up in price, the demand for their complement (Ori) has gone down. This means that the price of Ori has gone down.

Ascended gear also lowered the demand for aesthetic gear, as playing catch up back to 100% in stats is more important than pretty looks to most people. Mystic forge recipes for aesthetic gear used to be a big sink for Ori. Lower demand for Ori demanding aesthetic gear means lower demand for Ori. This means that the price of Ori has gone down.

The price of Ori isn’t a simplistic one dimensional issue here. There are many factors at play.

Everyone that is staying is focused on Fractals. Gear treadmill is responsible.

It is not a surprise, we all saw this coming. Lion’s Arch is overflow city, the rest of the world is largely under populated.

They are only doing that to annoy you, you do know that right?

GamerToukotsu.4219:

3+ minutes of regeneration and protection from this combo

I had the understanding that buff duration caps out at 1 minute when smaller durations are stacked up.