Guild Wars 2

Being able to sell Legendary Weapons is easier to justify, as Legendary Weapons are basically just “grind whatever you want for gold” skins. Whether you grind for gold to make your Legendary, or grind for gold to buy your Legendary, it is basically the same thing. Fractal Weapons on the other hand are rewards for people who run Fractals. The RNG can be annoying, like getting 4 Warhorns over the course of 6 months while some other guy gets a GS, a couple Swords, Dagger, etc in one month… however that’s just RNG for you.

And prophetically, I just did an Invasion Event that was overrun with farmers.

It took about 20 minutes to complete the first wave, even with a few people soloing, and working in small groups to do the job that the farming zergs did not want to do.

Pic related.

Kratic.8763:

If someone wants to buy a commander tag and run around doing their own thing, that’s their right.

Rights cannot be purchased for 100g.

Simply removing the WP fee for porting to any main city would also help to liven them up. Another big reason why people only use LA, is because of the free transport to it (via the Mists), as well as it being central (therefore lower average WP fees to the rest of the world). IIRC, the WP fee from Rata Sum to Fireheart Rise is around 4 or 5 silver.

The liquid karma is indeed obsolete now with the addition of the account wallet and removal of the effect of karma boosters. All it is, is unneeded clicking. This is especially the case for when you purchase hundreds of Lost Orrian Jewellery boxes at a time. There is absolutely no reason not to simply change those liquid karma consumables into directly adding the karma to your wallet.

Orpheal.8263:

[Cashshop Gems as a loot reward]

This is a great idea. Not only are gold and gems somewhat fungible, but this would also give those not necessarily interested in the Gemshop a taste of what it has to offer. However the amount should be low, as the Gemshop is a source of revenue, and we wouldn’t want that revenue stream being hurt by the ability to simply farm in game for very long periods of time. This should basically act as a teaser, or ad, rather than a replacement for players actually purchasing gems (or gold-to-gem exchanges from other people who have purchased the gems themselves).

Suggestion:
An adjustment to how rewards are given out in open world PvE is needed. Loot, especially champion loot should be reduced in proportion to how many players killed it.

Note: I am not suggesting a net nerf to loot drops, or even to champion loot drops. It would be best if champion loot was actually increased to a higher default level, then reduced to account for how much it is being splitted by. The rate in which loot is reduced should not be one to one (ie: two people receive 50% loot, three people get 33%), it should be a much more gradual reduction (ie: 1-10 people tagging get 100%, 11-20 get 70%, 21-30 get 50%). Note: these numbers are just an example the actual diminishing returns to loot for the size of the group should be determined after a bit more study by the people being paid to do so.

Another thing that might be worth considering is what determines how many people are counted for this diminishing returns. If it is simply counting players by the amount of people who tagged the champion, then this would incentivise players to simply zerg up and burst champions down as fast as possible (to reduce the amount of other people about to get the tag before the champion dies). This would mean that champion zerg farming would simply turn into “who can tab target and burst down the champions the fastest”, where slower members of the zerg will then get very little for their effort. Instead, this number for diminishing returns should be based on how many players are in the vicinity, as that is what the main issue is (at least for FPS and gameplay difficulty is concerned with). Simply reducing the reward based on how many players are nearby, rather than how many got the tag, does not incentivise bursting champions down before the other guy can do enough damage, and therefore would give a much higher relative reward to the non zerggy gameplay that was intended.

Reworking the champion loot rewards like this will give higher rewards for playing in smaller (more personal) groups, as this gameplay strategy currently is far from optimal (as far as loot incentives is concerned), even though it is by far more of an enjoyable gameplay experience.

Tl;dr: Incentives determine what the players will do. Therefore incentives should promote fun gameplay.

Balling up in a big laggy group of 60 players, racing to tag as many enemies as possible before they go down, paying extra attention to tab-target through to find the champions before it is too late, this is not fun or the good kind of challenging. For things such as big world boss events, where you don’t even have to worry about getting your tags in on the spawning enemies before they die, this oftentimes results in the fact that you can simply AFK auto attack the boss to death (as long as the auto attack keeps going, sometimes the auto attack doesn’t seem to stick).

For certain events, most notably the current Living Story related Invasion meta events, this type of farming (or lazy) behaviour can actually work against the server’s (or overflow’s) interest progress towards completing said meta event. In these Invasion meta events, a team of 2-10 people can clear events almost as fast as a 60+ man zerg, as the value of the marginal player in a group of 2-10 is orders of magnitude more valuable to the event than the marginal player in a group of 50-70. Doing the events with only 1-10 people is actually a whole lot more fun and and even challenging as well. The impressions that players get from zergging these events, or doing them in small groups is very different, as many of those zergging the events scoff at “just another zerg update”, while those actually working in smaller groups can actually enjoy the combat more. Additionally, if everyone simply zergged, the meta event would be likely to fail from timing out, as that big laggy group of players cannot possible clear enough events to progress the meta event at an adequate rate.

What is the reason for people opting for more of this zergging strategy? The PvE incentives in place of course! Those players zergging the events are opting for the more profitable strategy due to the new champion rewards, as they are getting many more champion kills than those smaller groups, in addition to being able to tag for non-champion kills, for even more loot. “LFM Zerker Staff Guardian”, that is what you’re going to hear because that is what the incentives are encouraging players to do.

With these loot incentives in place, zergging is the Nash Equilibrium of what is basically a Prisoner’s Dilemma. If the player cooperates (spread out in small groups) they will be benefiting their server’s (overflow) by progressing the meta event faster, thus increasing the chances of success; however they will receive less personal loot from kills. If the player defects (ball up in the biggest zerg on the map) they will be hurting their server’s (overflow) progress towards the meta event, however they will be receiving much more personal loot.

This optimal farming strategy of zergging can also be a negative influence in other parts of open world PvE. The Ember farm in Cursed Shore, as well as the champion trains running through zones (Frostgorge, Cursed Shore, even Queensdale) are all notable current examples. Outside of the Ember Farm where simply tagging champs before they die is the best strategy, running in a mad dash from champ to champ to get the tag before they die is the optimal way of farming champions. The only difficulty involved here is getting from champ A to champ B in time, the actual champion fights with that many people is as easy as AFK auto attacking. It is clear that this behaviour was not the intended outcome (Snowcrush can attest to this, I believe his name was); however this is exactly the behaviour that is being incentivized.

The Liadri mini is literally the only one that I care about, because it is more than a simple “grind or pay money to get” mini. The game needs more stuff that doesn’t simply require mindless grinding, or cash-to-gems-to-gold to acquire, as that sort of stuff feels somewhat hollow.

You must have known that a nerf was coming. I, as well as most people I know, made sure to clean out all their tickets and bags before the patch, as that was one of the more obvious nerfs.

Too many times you will be a nice guy, rez the downed person, then they will quickly queue up before you. Not only are you sacrificing your farming time by spending time rezzing them, and more lost time because now you are sharing your arena with them, but they won’t even have the courtesy to let you go first.

I will rez people because I’m a nice guy, but I’ll generally do it when I’m just waiting on my short cooldowns between matches. Most people however have the courtesy to just WP, rather than beg for a tiny WP fee. Another bonus for the farmer when the dead guy WPs is that they usually won’t come back to the same arena, their best case scenario is that they decide to go to one of the Guantlet arenas with other non-farmers… which is best for the farmers and the non farmers.

Hexxen.7216:

This is so wrong. Staff#4 got a bit of nerf with no on demand protection but Chaos Armor as a whole got a buff cause it never before gave protection on being struck.(well it did in the beta but they switched it and now they switched it back) Now it does. Chaos Armor from finishers saw a HUGE buff.

Only Staff#4 gave protection before this buff to chaos armor. Blast finished armors would only get regen or swiftness when struck. ^^

Correct me if I am wrong, but the internal cool down that was applied to Staff4 also applies to the Chaos armour from combos.

Ehecatl.9172:

FMost modern charr won’t do that because it’d be emulating the Flame Legion.

Who cares about the “most”, PC’s aren’t “most”. It looks pretty decent, especially for casters. It also takes care of a lot of clipping and stretching… which again, benefit casters the most.

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

kahzee.6042:

I’d go with people exaggerating

+1 I agree , so by now someone made 1500g , or so ppl claim.

Burying you head in the sand won’t change the facts that people are making hundreds or thousands of gold from the Queen’s Gauntlet if they are willing to farm it.

tolunart.2095:

It’s temporary content. For a month there were massive zergs running through Southsun farming with +MF and +GF boosts, did that ruin the economy?

That wasn’t putting hundreds or thousands of gold into the farmer’s pockets in less than a week.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

From my experience and my death just now, that is incorrect. I have many times had the heal stop thanks to the conditions that i have on myself. Though i wouldn’t be to shocked if it was bugged.

You’re either bugged, or you just don’t know what is hitting you and interrupting the channel.

tolunart.2095:

Do you really think that Anet management, having hired a professional (and no doubt fairly well paid) economist to keep the in-game economy from self-destructing would allow developers to make changes to the game that could potentially do just that without consulting the economist (the one they are giving a nice paycheck to) about it?

That would be like driving on the interstate and forgetting that the car has a brake pedal.

This is what governments do all the time. They hire economists to tell them how not to screw up the economy, then they just don’t listen to what the economists have to say, or at least just selectively listen to the economists.

I don’t see how it would be far fetched for Anet to just keep making ridiculously optimal farming methods (which are also incredibly mind numbing) without listening to their in house economist. The players who are willing to do the exact same Subject7/Deadeye/etc farm for hours on end are a couple orders of magnitude richer than people who don’t want to just do the exact same couple actions repeated for hours on end.

This farming, which is by far more profitable than CoF P1 farming ever was, also makes CoF P1 farming look incredibly interesting and fun in comparison. The more mind numbing the farm, the more profitable it seems to be. Seriously, people making thousands of gold off the Queen’s Guantlet here in the last week are most likely going to have a large impact on the game economy. Simply jacking up the prices of some new goodies to function as a gold sink is just going to be placing it far out of reach from anyone else… which makes people feel even more compelled to jump onto the next boring mass farm.

I’m holding most of my game currency in commodities, because I’m fearing that the ensuing inflation is going to put a legendary far out of reach if I do not do so, since I generally avoid these boring, but highly profitable farms. I’ll wish my fellow economist John Smith the best in his efforts, but I will still be hedging my bets.

colesy.8490:

Or they can be used as support and still output strong DPS. Which … they do.

Exactly. Support is not tied to stats in one bit. A zerker Guardian’s WoR works just as well as a cleric Guardian’s WoR.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m all for higher difficulty. People that find it too difficult can just skip it. To don’t need to get those achievement points.

This exactly. The “completionists” that just want to be handed easy points just need to drop their massive entitlement issues. The reason why Achievements and Titles is a good thing is because then the lower skilled players aren’t denied of content due to skill gating… however that isn’t even enough for some of these people.

The reason why a lot of Guardians use 30 in Valour, is because the people wanting a tanky Guardian want AH, while the people wanting a DPS Guardian want the 30% crit damage. AH is a good trait, but it is by no means the best trait, or the one reason why people go into that trait line.

colesy.8490:

Full berserker. Anything less and you’re doing it either out of personal preference (for example using a condi build rather than a power build, power > condi in PvE but you may just enjoy conditions), or not being able to handle berserker (and on an evasive class like mesmer it’s actually quite easy to handle berserker).

Despite being full berserker you’ll be able to DPS, support and control.

If we are talking about PvE, this applies for every class. But yes, going full zerker on Mesmer is a bit easier as Mesmer is such an evasive class, however we kind of need that in comparison to other classes to try to not fall too far behind in damage compared to other classes.

For PvP there is a lot more variety, just like for every class, as since PvP is more unpredictable, no one build is necessarily the optimal build, and it can pay to be able to take a blindside hit every now and then.

Not sure why you’d want to use a blast finisher in an ethereal field though. Chaos Armour is terrible since the recent nerf. In fact when I see someone else blast finish my ethereal fields, I cringe, because they just wasted a blast finisher in the wrong combo field.

If you’re going to blast finish a Mesmer field, do so in a light field for AoE Retaliation. The only good thing about Chaos Armour on Staff4 since the nerf is that it is still instant cast, meaning that it gives has the chance to give you a low duration boon or two without having to stop you from doing something useful, like auto attacking, or /dance, etc.

Liadri is probably easier. Since it is combat focused, some classes will have advantages over other classes.

There should be many more challenges like Liadri and the Mad King’s Clock Tower, the challenge is extremely refreshing, and it actually feels more like playing a video game, than the video game playing itself.

The easiest and fastest dungeon path in the game is no longer the most profitable to do for hours on end. Deal with it.

MrRuin.9740:

Why does this “it isn’t an exploit” argument stop with that? It still works exactly as advertised, so why does anyone need a refund? They did not remove coin drops from game. The infusion still functions. Nowhere on the infusion description does it say “maximizes dungeon coin drops” or “spam Cof with this infusion”. A refund implies the infusion does not work. If a refund is wanted on an item that still does work exactly as described, then any bonus gained during the course of its usage should also be retrospectively taken away as part of the refund.

CoF farmers had your fun, made your coin, spammed it enough that it got changed and noone can do it anymore, and are left with infusions that still work anywhere else. Refund of infusions would be ridiculous.
Nothing against those of you who did it, but it comes off as extreme greed to ask for a refund back for an item you used to your advantage that still functions today as it did when you first bought it.

This isn’t about CoF, this is about dungeons in general, and laurels.

If you cannot see how the dungeon reward rework now means that those laurels investment is now almost useless, I suggest you actually read the arguments ITT, or perhaps work on your reading comprehension and just don’t bother respond. Laurels are already bad enough, as they mean that many people will never be able to gear up their alts, or have multiple gear sets for characters. This is just adding insult to injury for people with alts.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Apothecary gear infers conditions. When I say I can out-DPS zerkers, it means I don’t run burst. L2Read.

You can burst with conditions. That’s why having more than one condition damage party member is generally a bad idea, because then they negate each other’s burst when the cap is reached.

Deamhan.9538:

Mobs only hit hard when you have no toughness. Making them hit for less will only make zerker the better choice and reduce/eliminate the need for toughness, vitality, and/or healing gear.

The point that was raised is that enemies should hit for less damage, but attack more often. This way the zerker player cannot simply negate 100% of the incoming damage by simply making one dodge every 5 seconds.

Reihert.1509:

Go full zerker on Arah p4.

If your whole team is full zerker you gonna have a hard time.

Or if you have a good party, it doesn’t matter which dungeon path you do, as full zerk will be the best. I cannot recall a part of Arah4 that wouldn’t benefit from a full zerk party. Melee zerking Lupi and everything, zerk just makes it easier if you know what you are doing.

Amun Ra.6435:

I already consider having portal on my utility bar useless…so again, I would not have a problem with a permanent portal being in game.

Anet would then have to replace Portal as a utility skill with another unique skill for Mesmer. They are not going to do this. Instead they will simply leave this superiour skill costing an arm and a leg, so that they won’t be infringing upon Mesmer skills.

There is no “Mesmer QQ” here, as the only people complaining are the ones that want a preposterous change to be made. Its not going to happen.

Amun Ra.6435:

LOL at the Mesmer’s QQ here. I can see no logical reason for the QQ on a permanent portal ever making it to the game. “One of the Mesmer’s main use” ? really? As a Mesmer you consider that your main use?

I must be playing my Mesmer wrong… o.O

This item would make a Mesmer having portal on their own utility bar useless. Not only would other classes gain a unique class ability, but it would also be so good that even the class with the actual ability would shelve that utility and never use it again, as they would simply use the item, freeing up another utility slot.

How about we get a plethora of click-ables that replace every utility? Then we don’t even need the utility bar, or specific classes, we can just play any class we want with an open inventory clicking all of our skills. Sounds like an absolutely boring and tedious way to play.

If you want a Mesmer skill, bring a long a Mesmer, or pay your arm and a leg for this item.

Yes, making content impossible for [unskilled] zerk geared players would be wonderful. PvE content is ridiculously easy, which is one of the reasons for why zerk is so much better. Not having a holy trinity has nothing to do with the low difficulty level… the low difficulty is almost entirely due to lazy implementation of encounters, and appealing to low skilled players too much.

ProxyDamage.9826:

For the “slow” crowd: It’s PvE only.

The item is useless. Should be permanent use.

For the “fast” crowd: Items should not invalidate unique class abilities, even if it is PvE only.

The reason why zerk is king is not the absence of the holy trinity, the reason is because the encounteres are basically designed to play to zerker’s strengths, as well as completely gimping other stats.

Almost everyone knows the plethora of issues around condition damage, from being just down right weak in its scaling (compared to zerker stats), as well the condition caps (more than one condition spec’d player attacking the same target results in hitting the cap, resulting in much damage simply not being registered). Healing power also scales horribly.

As for toughness and vitality, the reason why other methods of damage mitigation render these stats almost useless in comparison to zerker stats, is because almost every incoming attack from PvE enemies occur so infrequently that the player is able to dodge or otherwise mitigate nearly every incoming attack. Another thing here is that many attacks from PvE enemies are so powerful that it really doesn’t matter if you are a glass cannon, balanced, or a tanky build, as you will go down in just about as many attacks anyways.

Basically all that needs to happen to increase the value of defensive stats is buff healing power’s scaling, and have enemies attacking more frequently with softer attacks. The zerker can dodge every single one of the lethargic, one/two shot kill attacks, but they cannot dodge a multitude of smaller attacks.

This is also the case for recipes that require dungeon tokens.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Tear
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seals_of_Beetletun
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Bloom
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Moletariate
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_Legion_Charr_Carving
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Koda
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knowledge_Crystal
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shard_of_Zhaitan

No they are not. I specifically mentioned Mystic Forge and Crafting with the actual tokens for a reason. I am not talking about gifts.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Relic#Recipes
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascalonian_Tear
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seals_of_Beetletun
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deadly_Bloom
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Moletariate
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_Legion_Charr_Carving
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Koda
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knowledge_Crystal
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shard_of_Zhaitan

That is 23 recipes I believe, that are now impossible to make now with the new Currency Wallet.

Bismuth.3165:

Because who the hell has over 250 pristine fractal relics, and if someone does actually have more than 250, then he’d probably have enough money to get another bank slot.

I bet there are more extra Pristine Fractal Relics floating around in people’s inventory than there are Guild Commendations.

However if something was excluded from the wallet, it should have been the normal fractal relics and dungeon tokens, as it is now impossible to use them in mystic forge recipes and crafting.

At least confusion isn’t a threat, so the self inflicted confusion won’t really even hurt you.

Percentage damage, or increased crit (ot derived from stats) doesn’t even affect Illusions does it? Mesmers benefit the least from +% damage and the like, so the loss isn’t as much. Perhaps this could be substituted with +% stats as an alternative.

Also fixing the bugged Sword auto attack should be a must… hopefully not the usual way of “fixing” these sorts of bugs though (“We’ve changed the tool tip to better reflect the bad skill”).

As a Mesmer, I’m glad that the cost is prohibitive. Don’t need non-Mesmers getting my unique abilities. Portal is more of a cooperative oriented skill anyways, so it isn’t like non-Mesmers are even prevented from using it to do fun stuff (like Jump Shot vs the Experimental Rifle’s jump which is similar).

Tokens that are required for Mystic Forge recipes can no longer be used. Jewellery recipes using dungeon tokens, and Ascended recipes requiring fractal relics. These recipes have been ruined until they fix this.

The wallet also looks rather clunky. Looks like a display option for people with bad eyes, it doesn’t have to take up the entire screen.

Other than that, it is very nice.

Arguably, a Guardian (or other class perhaps) with a toughness build can be an asset to a party, if playing the Anchor role. Of course then it is best for them to supplement their build with a fair amount of zerker gear once they have enough survivability to take most the hits incoming to the party. Personally I’m not sure exactly which is the most optimal, having an Anchor (with some zerkers) in a party of zerkers, or simply an entire party of zerkers.

Boon duration can be useful for stacking might and fury (which is basically just more zerker stats). Condition duration is useful for increased Vulnerability duration, again to make the best use of the zerker stats. However just as with an Anchor build in the party, it might be up for argument whether or not this is worth it.

All other stat distributions, yes, they are generally selfish in a competent party, as they don’t help the party. Don’t blame the zerkers, blame Anet for consistently creating content that is catered to zerker stats, as well as gimping other strategies such as condition damage.

Having bosses that you can AFK auto attack through should never have happened. I don’t know what the excuse could even be.

aophts.9862:

Please, stop nerfing every place and mobs and stop forcing people to buy gems to convert to gold or to run CoF P1 9999999x times! Everything in this game rely on farm gold! ugh

CoF P1 farm is about to be killed off (finally). Buying gems to convert to gold does not create gold, it is actually a gold sink, therefore this is an unrelated tangent to the point you were trying to make.

Everything being reliant on gold could be a bit of an issue though, as having some items only dropping from specific bosses could make for a more traditional MMO grind kind of way of acquiring certain gear that some people enjoy.

If good loot drops were more common, that would simply depreciate the value of that loot, and it would no longer be “good loot drops”.

Stone.6751:

Hey, I spent a month collecting Laurels for an Ascended ring only to find out that I can’t have two of the same rings equipped.

NOWHERE did the game inform me that I couldn’t have two of the same Ascended item, and since I tried to equip it and it unequipped the other ring, it instantly became Soulbound.

Talk about a discouraging waste. A post was made and a ticket was submitted and neither got a reply.

To be fair, the rings say “unique” right on them. In order to soulbound both rings, since they are unique, you would have to remove one first. If you didn’t soulbind both, then you could have just given it to an alt. Besides if you looked into alternate ways of acquiring rings, you would notice that they are FotM drops, as well as purchasable with 10 Pristine Fractal Relics. Seeing as how a replacement for the ring is easy to get, you are in luck that you only made a small mistake.

The point of this thread however, is that the people who purchased guilded infusions actually knew what they were doing, and did not make silly mistakes like buyingand soulbinding 2 unique rings using gated currency, rather than the much easier to get gated currency. This is the difference from “I didn’t know what I was doing and I regret my mistake” and “I made the best decision, well researched to make the best of my gated currency, but now it is arbitrarily being nerfed into almost uselessness”.

Rennoko.5731:

I have 250 laurels, and full ascended gear on my main. I literally could care less about the laurels and have no use for them, exactly the same as gold.

What’s your beef then? There are many people who have absolutely no hope of gearing up their characters due to Laurels being gated like this.

ArchonWing.9480:

…

Thanks for the elaboration. Ok yeah your thinking is actually very similar to my own on the matter. The main difference being that you’re basically assuming that further positive changes can be made to the way loot is acquired from enemies (therefore gold find may still be useful and worth the investment), while I’m going for the more pessimistic view in that the way loot is handled is not going to be improved (so might as well just scrap gold find along with magic find).

Gehenna.3625:

raise the level cap (which is coming according to Anet last time I checked)

Sorry for the tangent… but source please? I don’t think Anet is that suicidal with their game…

ArchonWing.9480:

Fact is, it is just being balanced with the rewards from elsewhere.

The problem isn’t with gold find. The problem is with the entire game itself. The thing that needs to be fixed is that enemies everywhere in the game needs to drop more gold. 20% of trash is still trash and thus the entire loot system needs a revamp.

If this is all I had read of your posts, I could have sworn that you are simply in agreement with everything I’m saying. As it is once the patch hits, the cost does not justify the purchase of this item, because the only real reason for it (boss gold drop) is being removed. Trash does not give nearly enough of a benefit to make up for it.

Care to elaborate on why exactly you disagree?.. it almost seems like a simple misunderstanding or something.

TheDaiBish.9735:

As for Ascended, as long as that’s the last tier, it’s more of a step, since a treadmill is continuous until you get off.

Ascended is a massive treadmill. Most people will never be able gear up your alts to max gear, especially if you have multiple builds you wish to play.

Ascended gear was only put in to appease these players who cannot fathom a video game without a useless gear treadmill. There are plenty of games that mask little content behind massive grinds and gear treadmills, those people should just go play those games.

ArchonWing.9480:

And after the patch, it will still function as advertised.

Sure the words used to describe its use have not changed, but suddenly the effectiveness of the Infusion is going to reduced by what?… 90% or more? Sounds like the reasoning used by a slimy lawyer. Just remember that this costing Laurels, means that it was a long grind and represents a lot of the player’s time, effort and in game wealth. I don’t think most people who actually use the item will appreciate having the wool pulled over their eyes and have their item’s effectiveness kitten so much.

This item is no longer worth almost a month’s work. It should probably have its cost reduced to 5 Laurels, perhaps then those who purchased it could receive a 15 Laurel rebate.

ArchonWing.9480:

Nope. It was never meant to be used to exploit a dungeon in that manner, unlike magic find which is being removed completely from gear.

It isn’t an exploit, it functioned exactly as advertised. Now however the main reason for using the Gilded Infusion is being removed. You’re statement referencing “exploits” sounds more like sour grapes than anything.

Range is the safe way of doing damage. For this reason, range does not do as much damage as melee. The problem is, the content in dungeons is so easy that you never really have to go for the safe ranged option.

If WvW is your thing, I would take a second look at the other classes and make sure that you really like the Thieve class. Personally I feel like a bit of a burden to the team in fights that get to more than 10 people a side… and kind of regret that I didn’t log in with my Guardian or Necro.

However if smaller scale action in WvW is your thing, than Thief can do a pretty decent job there. Soloing camps, killing dolyaks and then getting out before the enemy response catches you is what the Thief excels at. They are also phenomenal at killing noobs and people who otherwise don’t understand the Thief class… but I wouldn’t rank this last quality very highly as that strength against noobie players simply does not exist against anyone who has a Thief alt, and therefore knows what the squishy little thief is going to do once he turns invisible.

In short, make sure you like the class, and don’t let the “thief OP” posts sway your confidence in the class. That said, Thief can be a very fun class, and if you know your stuff you can be useful with it.

As for Thieves in PvE, recently I’ve come around to appreciate a Thief in my party, but you really have to know what you’re doing to be as useful as just another Warrior or Guardian.