Guild Wars 2

and lastly:

Arcana

Minor:
Arcane Fury – Hands down the best Minor trait Eles have. Opens up super interesting tactical choices on when to switch attunements and which skill to use etc.. I love it.
Lingering Elements – It should be made much clearer as to what exactly this trait affects. It’s a good trait, even if I cannot comprehend its full functionality ATM.
Arcane Precision – According to the Wiki this has a 7,5% proc chance, which is quite low. How about 10%?

Major:
Arcane Mastery – Another decent cooldown reducing trait, because Arcane skills can be used from any attunement and have mostly longer cooldowns.
Arcane Resurrection – Good example of an altruistic trait that also benefits myself. It’s still too situational though and should thus be changed.
Arcane Retribution – A bit “Meh…” for a Major. I don’t like +damage traits I cannot control.
Final Shielding – How about combining this with Arcane Retribution? If this trait wasn’t bugged (procs at around 10% life, not 25%) it would be OK, but again it’s not always doing something, which I dislike, hence the suggestion of combining it with AR.
Elemental Attunement – Sweet. Such a good example of a trait that’s versatile yet far from overpowered. I like buffing people and the trait helps me even if I play alone.
Renewing Stamina – Good but situational. I will rarely choose this trait because of good alternatives.
Vigorous Scepter – I tested this once and it felt pretty weak. I’m also not sure why Scepter is the chosen weapon.
Blasting Staff – Good.
Windborne Dagger – Would be good if it wasn’t bugged.
Arcane Energy – Yet another endurance helper. There are far too many!
Evasive Arcana – A nice idea. I don’t like the 10sec cooldown, because it feels confusing to have endurance as limiting factor AND this internal 10sec cooldown AND attunement cooldowns. It’s also not easy to estimate the area of effect of the dodge effects.
Elemental Surge – This would be the backbone of my Staff build if Arcane Power wasn’t so bugged. A lot of cool stuff can be done with this, so please fix the bugs!

/phew.

Earth

Minor:
Stone Flesh – Needs to affect all attunements. Again, I really dislike one attunement only effects, because they feel so limiting and do nothing a lot of the time.
Earthen Blast – I like the effect, but it somehow never matters at all in cases where I switch to Earth.
Enduring Damage – Even if this trait did affect condition damage, which it does not, I wouldn’t like it much. Endurance management has nothing to do with Earth, so this trait feels pretty random.

Major:

Obsidian Focus – Too situational. If stuff keeps hitting me while I channel sth. then I will likely stop doing so soon and do sth. about it rather than keep on channeling.
Signet Mastery – This is the first trait I ditched in my Signet build. Somehow pure cooldown reduction traits don’t feel worth it. The reason might be fights being over once the CD resets most of the time anyway.
Earth’s Embrace – CD should be 60s. Works nice in a Cantrip build, but it’s still a bit weak for a Major.
Salt Stone – Not working with condition damage and 5% is weak. Boring trait anyhow.
Elemental Shielding – Good trait. 3sec is quite short, but it’s a powerful effect that can be prolonged with +duration. Still, I dislike that I cannot be sure the effect will actually have an impact each time I use an aura.
Stone Splinters – 5% more dmg is weak for a Major. This trait should read “Deal 5% more damage when you are within melee range of your target and then die horribly”. Even a D/D Ele does not want to have this trait trigger too often except while farming.
Strength of Stone – Even worse than the other “10% while in this attunement” traits, because it will not affect conditions, which Earth damage is about.
Serrated Stones – Finally something that helps condition dmg. Good trait, even better now since Frost Bow Conjure #4 does Bleeding.
Geomancer’s Freedom – I’d like to see statistics on how many people actually use this trait. This would be a cool Minor, but it’s a bad Major.
Geomancer’s Alacrity – See similar traits in Fire and Air I already mentioned. Don’t like it.
Rock Solid – Extremely situational. Maybe useful in tPvP, but I don’t see me standing there going into Earth just to have 2s stability to avoid a control skill that likely will do damage as well. Really bad trait for Grandmaster IMO.
Written in Stone – Worthy Grandmaster trait.

Water

Minor:
Soothing Mist – Very nice.
Healing Ripple – Very nice.
Bountiful Power – Very nice. That’s the kind of +dmg trait I like. Flexible and interesting.

Major:
Aquamancer’s Alacrity – Same as with all Alacrity traits, I don’t like ‘em.
Shard of Ice – Nice dmg boost and a welcome addition to an Arcane heavy build. I feel the trait should give 5 Vulnerability stacks on all Arcane skills though (OR a longer duration), not just when using Arcane Power. The “problem” with Vulnerability is, that everyone benefits from it, so it tends to be weak for myself alone and strong while playing in groups.
Soothing Disruption – Nice addition to a Cantrip build. Fits much better than Fire’s Spell Slinger IMO since Cantrips are mostly used defensively.
Piercing Shards – Love it. It’s so interesting to have this skill in Water. Works well with Conjures, too, but only if you go 25p into Air for Weak Spot OR Arcane heavy. I tried making a Conjure build like this but it was too unreliable. Would love to see this improved.
Cleansing Wave – Simple but good. I will often end up NOT taking this trait however, because I’d rather use a utility or a normal skill than “wasting” a Major trait for an effect that isn’t always needed. In groups and dungeons this trait can be very convenient though.
Vital Striking – I like it, because it works with all attunements and because it rewards good play.
Stop Drop and Roll – Too situational. I don’t like this trait at all. Like with Earth’s Geomancer’s Freedom this would make a better Minor trait.
Icy Mist – Should be rolled into Soothing Wave, too weak on its own.
Cantrip Mastery – Actually a meaningful cooldown reducing trait, since Cantrips have such long cooldowns.
Soothing Wave – See Icy Mist.
Cleansing Water – Looks like this could be good in a condition heavy environment and when using other regeneration stuff, but it feels way too situational.
Powerful Aura – Another worthy Grandmaster trait. It should give allies Protection, Fury, Swiftness from auras that were produced from combos too though, which it currently does not (I heard), and I would feel better while soloing if the trait’s use wasn’t 100% altruistic.

(continued in part 3)…

Alright, this is gonna be long, so I’ll try to make it short :

Fire

Minor:
Flame Barrier – Very weak, I don’t want to be hit in melee so I don’t want to trait for the occasion either.
Sunspot – Nice in theory, but I don’t want to be in melee range with anything but Dagger, and even then the standard Updraft – Burning Speed combo means this skill will hit air most of the time.
Burning Rage – Typical Minor trait, boring but OK. Fits the Fire theme.

Major:
Lava Tomb – Um… nice flavor skill I guess, but I don’t want to trait for sth. that only helps me when I’m downed.
Burning Fire – Adds more duration to stuff that already burns. DPS increase is actually not too bad, but the trait is too situational.
Ember’s Might – Weak and boring. It’s OK to have this as a Minor trait, but not as Major.
Spell Slinger – Decent, but situational. I would prefer if it affected another skill type on top to make it more versatile.
Burning Precision – Another DPS increasing trait. I sometimes choose this when only going 10p in Fire, but it’s a “Meh…” decision.
Internal Fire – Standard trait when going heavy Fire. I have a problem with traits that only buff dmg of one spell school though, even if it’s a good amount like here.
Pyromancer’s Alacrity – Same as with Internal Fire. I think traits like these two should affect spells across all attunements, e.g. “All instant spells deal 10% more damage and recharge 20% faster”.
Conjurer – This trait is too far into Fire and thus limits build variety when going for a Conjure build. It’s also too weak and needs another effect on top, because more charges is not always what you care for when playing with Conjures.
Fire’s Embrace – Fun trait. The duration should be 5sec though. 3 sec shields emphasizes reactionary play too much due to the desire to get the most out of the shield, but you often want to use Signets proactively + many signets have effects that prevent opponents from hitting you for short amounts of time (blind, root, chill). 5sec shields would make sure that at least one of your opponent’s hits will actually hit the shield and burn them.
One with Fire – Terrible.
Persisting Flames – Effect too weak for Major trait. This would be weak even as Minor.
Pyromancer’s Puissance – A worthy last tier Major trait. Was better when it affected Conjures. Why did you change that?

Air

Minor:
Zephyr’s Speed – Should affect all attunements. I feel hamstringed having to be in Air all the time when I’m moving around. This trait also conflicts with One with Air and makes Electric Discharge a lot less useful.
Electric Discharge – I like this trait.
Weak Spot – I like this trait, too. Pairs well with all multihit attacks.

Major:
Zephyr’s Boon – Very good.
Zephyr’s Focus – Arcana already has tons of endurance buffs. Might want to cut a few.
Quick Glyphs – It’s OK, but I would prefer rolling this into Inscription. The aura buffing traits are more powerful than these two alone.
One with Air – I love running faster, but again: makes me feel forced to have Air as my start attunement, which I dislike.
Soothing Winds – Needs to be 10%. I like these converter traits, because they make highly specialized builds more versatile.
Bolt to the Heart – Obviously great vs tough PvE mobs, but rather bad in PvP and while farming. It’s a trait I want to avoid, because it does nothing most of time.
Arcane Lightning – Quite weak, or I’m missing something here.
Inscription – Should be combined with Quick Glyphs. Choosing two Glyph traits in Air is sth. one can rarely afford.
Aeromancer’s Alacrity – Same as with the Fire equivalent.
Air Training – Same as with Fire equivalent.
Tempest Defense – Didn’t work when I tried it. Seems pretty weak and has gigantic cooldown.
Grounded – Is the basis of my current Scepter/Focus farming build. The trait itself is OK, but it’s too hard to make a build around it that’s versatile. Pure dmg buffing traits are a lot less painful to use and will likely bring the same DPS if not more in many cases. I suggest giving this trait a slight +knockdown/stun duration on top to make it more interesting.

(continued in part 2)…

JonPeters.5630:

It has always had a delay, I am investigating if the delay somehow got changed. If someone has good raw data on the old damage of berserker vs the new damage that will also help me track down where that change came from and fix it.

Thanks,

Jon

It’s probably too much to call this “good raw data”, but my iBerserker used to crit for around 3k with me having roughly 3k attack power and a total of +30% crit dmg (not sure if that even matters). It did hit a single target more than once though. This damage is against Orr mobs mostly, since I farmed there for quite a while and thus have a relatively big amount of samples.

I strongly suggest changing the nameplates of dead players to a less vivid color. Especially in WvW it’s often very hard to see how many opponents are alive and how many are dead, depending on the size of the battle. This is unnecessarily confusing and also results in players keeping on casting AoEs long after a battle is over, just to make sure everyone’s dead.

Might be that. It’s strange though, since I never noticed any prior difference in HP with my characters. They have the life total they have since several weeks now and this is the first time something is different… The reason why my Ele didn’t get the bonus was btw because she was in an overflow instance of LA, now she has 600~ more HP too.

Edit: don’t these bonuses only trigger in WvW? I’m not in WvW.

My 80 Mesmer and Thief both have around 600 more life since the patch. The Hero tab keeps showing my old pre-patch life total though. My 80 Ele did not receive any extra life, however, although she needs it the most and keeps asking me to buy her something sturdier every day. Is this a bug? Which other professions are affected by this?

Whenever my character runs against an obstacle and I press Jump it will often not work for several key presses. That is an old problem though. Do you happen to run into an object while you want to jump?

How about you implement a CAPTCHA when mining, this should fix the bot problem :p
If it works well, you can implement it on looting anywhere

I feel Staff is always good for leveling whereas GS needs the right build and gear to be really good. It’s also not as convenient while you level due to wanting to be max range, which isn’t always possible. I would suggest 1h Sword and Focus as secondary weapon set. Not only will you get around faster, the Focus Phantasm does the most dmg of all our Phantasms and does it AoE, meaning once the target you cast the Phantasm on dies, it will have damaged surrounding targets already and you can finish them off with your Sword. I also strongly recommend the + Illusion health Signet and Decoy as utilities, which should make your life a lot easier.

D/D Cantrip builds have great survivability and have very decent dmg thanks to Might stacking. If you experience a “feeling of squishiness” in dungeons with this build then that’s normal, because melees have a hard time in dungeons in this game.

Thanks for this data. So, the two most popular professions happen to be the ones with the most effective oneshot/1second kill options… surprise!

Hm, I was 100% sure I read on the Wiki that it doesn’t stack. I just checked the article and it says it stacks. Maybe I confused it with sth else…

ThiBash.5634:

~Fire: only 3 hits activate AP.

~When using both Arcane Precision AND Arcane Wave, in water they cause the DOUBLE amount of chill, wheras in Earth they cause only HALF the immobilize.

I assume you are using Staff, because I reported the 3 crit only for Fireballs recently and my bet is that the AoE effect of Fireball will eat another charge of AP, hence only 3 crits. I hope this gets fixed soon, because I can’t play the build I was trying to make because of this bug.

Also: Chill stacks, Immobilize does not stack, so that’s not a bug

I just got killed in WvW while watching a Vista. Isn’t there supposed to be the same invulnerability buff as in PvE vistas? Because if not then it’s pointless to put cinematics there if I cannot watch them without being a free kill.

Jestersmiles.4365:

The game is balanced around team play not 1v1 or 1v2, good teams know how to stop some one from getting rez. The thing needs tweaking not getting rid off. DS is not going anywhere , can we stop with these threads please?

“The game is balanced around xy” sentences are wrong 9 out of 10 times. Why should the game be balanced around something that’s only enjoyable for a fraction of players and the rest is annoyed by it? That threads like these, where players repeatedly voice valid concerns, are not pointless, can be seen with the change to FOV, which eventually happened after many many complaints even though Anet stated many times they do not wish to change it.
To be honest, I don’t expect DS to be killed entirely in sPvP, but maybe there is a chance for an alternative format where DS does not exist, so players may choose which way to play and everyone can be happy.

Well, I wish Engineer had decent DPS outside of grenades. I don’t really enjoy doing all those double actions for one move all the time (and then my target/s move/s and I miss)

Watched the whole thing, liked some parts, disliked some, too.

I found the “Quickness 100 Blades” example quite disturbing, because the way Jonathan talked about it left the impression that the devs don’t see burst as a big problem, more as a L2P issue. Is it a L2P issue having to have a stunbreaker equipped and off CD and press it in a split second or just die? If a profession has trouble being competitive without instagibbing then by all means give it the tools it needs and remove the binary BS.
I also remember Anet guys saying during development that they do not want GW2 to be about twitch gameplay etc.. Well, it sure is a lot about that currently.
But maybe I’m misinterpreting things here and the comment about “bringing everything more in line” also included over the top burst, because if burst is toned down (and respectively bunkers), then all of a sudden many more builds will become viable that right now have a negative answer to the “Does it live through spam and burst before it starts working?” question.

Besides burst and spam, Downstate is my least favorite part about GW2 PvP. Why? Because I’m not playing in an organized team, nor do I want to. What was said about Downstate in the video left the impression that the primary goal is to make it work well in organized high level 5v5 tPvP play, and in these circumstances DS might actually be a fun mechanic. Too bad that it severely cripples much of the rest of PvP that’s going on: Looking good in a group fight in WvW despite being outnumbered? Tough luck, cause all the damage, interrupts and quickness stealth executes in the world are not enough to avoid endless near instant resses. Do you happen to have enganged in a 1v2 and are you actually having chances of winning? Better have that quickness stability stealth execute ready! Or are you just merely about to win a normal 1v1 battle, which might have been going on for a few minutes, just to have a random team mate of your opponent walk up and finish you off while you deal with the other guy’s DS damage, immunities and interrupts, which can take longer than most fights, and /snap, the guy you just took minutes to take down stands up as if nothing had happened, and you gain nothing but feeling like an idiot wasting his time.

My tone might be a bit harsh sometimes and I really do believe that you devs work hard all day to get things right and fun, but as a burned out former WoW PvP maniac I really really wanted (and still want) GW2 to be the next game that provides the tools for skill-based PvP, but Downstate, too much burst and spam, and sPvP maps that prevent tactical play through arena-style hyper-vulnerable cap points and very short travel paths keep it from being that.

/opinion

I die a lot in WvW because you can’t avoid dying in this game, but even when we do quite badly I always make at least a little bit of money due to events. Maybe it’s more of a problem if you really are constantly outnumbered and meet bigger numbers everywhere.

Concerning Arcane Power, please add this:

Fireball + Arcane Power = 3 crits and buff is gone.
My bet is that the aoe component of the spell will eat a charge alongside the projectile, resulting in one Fireball eating 2 charges.
This is effectively killing the build I was trying to make…

The limiting factor to me is gear choice. I’d gladly go for Vit gear, but I can’t if I want to play a build that relies on a high crit rate. Funny that in sPvP the Knight amulet has Power, Precision and Vitality whereas elsewhere you just cannot have decently high HP and an also decently high crit rate. This is currently annoying me a lot, because I too find Toughness to be impractical in many circumstances and would greatly prefer Vitality as my defensive stat, with any of my 3 professions I’m playing.

Xiomaro.2563:

The issues are pretty wide spread. Balance is actually less of an issue than a lot of people think; the issue for hot join is the fact that roaming and killing quickly is rewarded most – which has lead to the Thief and Mesmer problem. If people were rewarded more for actually holding onto the points and winning then we would see much less Thieves and Mesmers and more Guardians, Engineers, Necromancers, Elementalists etc in hot join.

Why would anyone want to def a point if your attacker can come from 4 different angles and hidden by obstacles, so you see him only when he’s already standing in front of you and then you have to fight him in a 3×3m cage area where any form of tactical play is nonexistent? Defending points is suicide.

I also think balance is a gigantic issue. There are just one or two ways to play your profession successfully and so many build options, traits, utility skills, gear combos and weapons etc. are unusable or at least suboptimal, because you have to survive the totally over the top burst that’s currently plaguing the game. Some stuff is also just flat out weaker in all regards for no benefit in other areas, preventing builds from being used that could be fun and good.

At the beginning I reported at least one of every bot train I came across, but after a while I saw them basically everywhere and stopped reporting because I don’t play GW2 to mainly report bots… After the recent bannings I still see bot trains in the night from time to time and I bother to report them again in good hopes.

Concentrate on other aspects of the game until these (known) problems are fixed, it’s the only thing you can do.

Yup, I think the only way besides Might buffs to get higher dot dmg than 116 in sPvP is using a Fire Conjure (Axe or GS) since it replaces your weapons which have… no stats in sPvP

The question should be “Are you versatile enough without any points in Arcana?”.
I would argue that most Dagger and Staff builds cannot live without points in Arcana. Scepter has strong and seemingly versatile build options for Air and Earth, but I’m still feeling kinda hamstringed when I have to deal with 15sec attunement swap. IMO 13 sec should be the basic duration and every 10 points in Arcana should give you one sec off.

Mimic skill will not absorb the first projectile hitting you, instead you will take full damage from the first hit while storing the projectile.

The skill is great otherwise, but this makes its functionality concerning mitigation of ranged dmg too situational.

Vv W.7821:

I’ve done a fair amount of testing with builds that don’t swap, specifically an air glass cannon and an earth bleeder, both with the scepter, but I have yet to find one that really works for me. A scepter/dagger air cannon isn’t half bad, with 30 fire, 30 air, and 10 water and three cantrips.

That’s actually in the direction of what I’m testing now and part of the reason I made this thread.

Hey,
it’s a bit un-fun for the people with more than one lv80 to go to dungeons. While there’s most of the time someone in your group who did the story mode of the explorable dungeon you want to go to already, so you do not have to do that with every character anew, Fractals now really forces you to go with only one char. Sure the drops there are at least acc bound, but people with alts naturally like to mix things up, and you can’t really do that ATM without spending a huge amount of time.

Mimic is totally killer, I love the skill. First of all, it’s WAY less obvious than the big shiny reflect dome and most people will happily continue firing on you, which brings us to the next great thing about Mimic: after absorbing the first projectile it will reflect projectiles for the remainder of its duration, and there is more. Not only will you reflect projectiles, you will also block all melee attacks that hit you, which has saved me countless times in WvW. These blocks will then even proc the retaliation trait if you have it!

I’m just curious. Every build I’ve come up with and seen so far has at least 10p in Arcana, to no surprise IMO, since 15sec attunement recharge feels so crippling.

If you are using a successful build without any points in Arcana, please share!

I approve. I feel like an idiot when I down a player in a 1vs2 and his buddy gets him back up in no time. (anyone expecting me to have an interrupt ready in such a situation must be a god at PvP)

Donedusted.9846:

When I play pvp and I win a game, I will often notice that many people on the losing team have a much higher score than me.

I’m not a casual PvPer usually and I noticed this as well. My initial reaction to any zerg rolling around the map is “cap ALL the points!!!”. I’m usually quite successful with playing this way, and I like to roam anyway, but boy does that ever give less points than playing the zerg game. On top of that I despise the whole downed state chore and will often leave my team mates to finish someone off while I move on. Well… sucks to play for fun :p

Another thing that totally encourages zerging is the fact that it takes so long to get to fights. Nobody wants to run minutes across the map and then get into a situation where chances are high that you die, forcing you to wait for ress or do the runaround all over again. I like smaller skirmishes and playing the ranged game, because IMO managing range and position is one of the most fun and essential things to master in PvP. Yet, it’s almost impossible to kite in this game, so any encounter with a stronger army will result in certain death if you are outnumbered period.
Of course you cannot let people instantly respawn 20 feet away from the last fight, but the current situation isn’t satisfactory either.

When you stand around near water around the Mystic Forge in LA there is this super loud and annoying deep bubbling sound coming from the water and it never stops. Please have a look at the frequency of these kinds of audio loops… across the whole game.

After reading the usual “l2p l2dodge lolzhowdougethit3timeslolz” posts that help no one and should be deleted I usually hit the “back” button in my browser immediately (call it “dodging the kitten”), but I have to say one thing: I play a Thief and whenever I’m accidentally spamming Heartseeker because of the game’s auto cueing or lag, I feel bad.

What happens in WvW says a lot about the game. Hasn’t anyone noticed that there are no real battles going on? There’s just swiftness buffed zergs steamrolling around and “PvDoor” (a term someone here coined which I had to steal).
Outside of fortifications I’m either in a zerg that totally wins or in a zerg that totally loses, the outcome of battles is decided by sheer numbers and loading times of characters. I never thought I would say this, but in WoW mass PvP was never so bad because the game provides/provided enough opportunity to play good. In GW2 there is very little of that… yet.

I could care less about new features as long as the gameplay is so non-e-sporty. I can’t imagine any e-sport flair evolving when the game is all about button mashing, killing in one second and then trying to execute your victim for 30 seconds while losing half your life.

Since it’s been 3 days I allow myself a bump. Would be cool if someone from Anet could confirm/deny this in a quick reply. Thanks

Iruwen.3164:

strange attempts at balancing (like increasing the mesmer portal cooldown from 60s to 90s, which fixes none of the underlying problems and changes basically nothing).

That’s very true. I’m also perplexed at the raw 50% dmg nerf to Dancing Dagger. The skill is now also 50% less fun to use…
These nerfs seem like placeholders to me anyhow. I just hope the future will bring the drastic changes across the board that PvP needs, because right now whenever I PvP I’m experiencing 25% fun, 25% indifference and 50% WTF!?

While playing in WvWvW range management is key and you want to be as far away from the enemy zerg as possible when using your skills. The fact that my skills will go on a small CD if I use them while not in range or sight of my target is very strenuous, because I have to stare at the UI constantly to watch for the red line to go away. I feel this goes against your design philosophy of wanting players to focus on what is going on in the game world and not look at little red lines under icons. It also makes me feel “clumsy” while playing, because I need to focus so much attention on this small detail.
I feel it would make the game much more enjoyable to play if skills just did not fire off if there is no sight or range.

Thanks for the quick reply, Kaii.
Hm, assuming all single target ranged rifle skills are projectiles this could only mean that there is a bug with the Mimic skill I’m using to reflect. That, or lag spikes maybe…

On my Mesmer I like to use a lot of reflect skills while in WvWvW. I noticed several times that Warriors using Rifle (with piercing trait) were not affected by my reflects. I’d like to make sure that my observations were correct and projectiles with piercing do ignore reflects, or am I wrong?

If we’re talking about effectiveness I’d say Mesmer giving 50 people quickness for 10 seconds. I feel like a god when I pop Time Warp in a big zerg and everyone’s DPS almost doubles.

If you test with 2 of those Sigils in the Mists vs no sigils, you will definitely notice a difference in crit frequency

Experimenting in the Mists with builds a lot, I found that certain stat values seem to be either hardcapped or buggy. Examples:

- Superior Rune of the Mesmer paired with 2 Superior Sigils of Paralyzation will give as much +Daze duration as the runes alone or as 2 sigils alone.
Also: both upgrades will not affect knockdown, although knockdown works like a stun and stun breaking skills will clear stun, daze and knockdown AFAIK.

- Condition duration paired with Bleed duration will somehow not stack either. I tested a runes/sigil combo with both duration enhancing upgrades equipped and they showed the same behavior as described in example 1.

So is there a ~33% hardcap on these (and other?) stats or is there a bug that prevents two different duration enhancers to stack?

PS: Same goes for movement speed as well, which seems to be hardcapped at ~33% no matter how much more runspeed you equip.

Short Bow + D/P or S/P, Caltrops, Signet of Malice, Dagger Storm, Shadow Refuge = easy time farming and leveling

After thinking some more about this I came to the conclusion that it would probably be enough if leveling up would not require three consecutive runs (and the extra boss after three parts in a row should definitely stay, since it engourages parties to stay together for that long).

3 Fractals do not take as long as one explorable mode dungeon usually. This is far from “dedicated” or long. I would be less aggravated if all my efforts to keep up with the majority of regular players had not been for nothing thus far. Already it is getting harder to get/make groups for lv1 only…

Just sayin’. I keep rotating between groups where people disc, I disc or bluescreen, and people just leaving inbetween fractal parts.
Somehow many people seem to think it’s OK to just leave after part 1 or 2 of a run if they feel like it, because it feels like something is over once you completed a segment. I strongly recommend punishing such behavior more, as has happened with the explorable mode changes.