Guild Wars 2

Sifu.6527:

[snip]
Time to post raw numbers to make our case!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Feedback-from-the-Patch-Note/first

I have no idea why that thread got pushed so far back, everyone on here should have been posting to keep it afloat on top.

I don’t know who’s OP or what, but I have a related question:
If Warriors get

1. Highest direct damage
2. Highest armor
3. Highest health

What exactly is the trade-off for other classes that are obviously deficient in at least one of those areas? Meaning, how is this balanced?

Going off what Orpheal said – more skills – but I have some different suggestions.

Introduce Skill Trainers per professions (say, like Master Thief, Master Ranger etc), that reside in some hard to reach areas in high level content.
Make these skill trainers teach you new PvE only skills (to avoid having the wvw/pve re-balancing issue), in exchange for Skill points.

Edit: DaWolv (post below me) brings up a good point – Karma especially has no higher level uses. So make these skill trainers ask for skill points + karma

Did you know that modern kevlar armor, while designed to stop bullets (at least certain types) cannot stop an arrow shot? Yet people don’t use bows that often anymore.

Why? Because a bow requires a lot of training to be used effectively, and lacks the range of modern firearms.

GW2 Firearms actually look like the old single-shot, loaded through muzzle, guns – though they fire as quickly as a semi-auto (or with some skills full-auto).

My best explanation is this: Firearms are new – they are not surpassing bows in deadliness yet, but since they are significantly easier to use, they are being used by some professions.

At the same time, bows may hold a slight edge on damage in certain areas, but require a lot of training to use, so they aren’t as commonly used. It’s also important to note that bows can be maintained and used without infrastructure – making an arrow is difficult, but doable by one self, while making gunpowder and bullets usually requires an infrastructure build up.

A ranger is more or less an archery master – in terms of lore, I think of people like Adian and Nente who lived in the countryside, away from most civilization, hunting to survive, and thus being extremely well trained with all bows- especially since they’re easier to maintain than guns.

Humorless.1573:

[snip]
Because it is.

Vital Shot keeps up 4-5 stacks of bleeding (4s)
Ranger SB keeps up 5-6 stacks of bleeding (3s)

Haha, this is a joke. You are correct of course, but the design is a joke. Both listed as 1/2 activation time, and Vital Shot gives 1s longer bleed, one would imagine that the vital shot would keep up more stacks. One would imagine they have the same rate of fire.

More “jokes”:

• Both deal 134 dmg per hit, with the same damage coefficient – but as established Crossfire has a higher rate of fire, meaning significantly more damage.
• Not only that but Rangers’ skills are theoretically only 50% or so from their damage output, because they also get a pet.
• Edit: Crossfire also has 1200 range, but Vital Shot has 900.

Are ye laughin’ yet?

LonelyReaper.8075:

[snip]
Praying that the these skin will be release soon.

The female armor from the first pic looks a lot like what Lexi Price is wearing (an otherwise forgettable npc whos armor has caught my eye before, but I have not been able to find in-game):
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lexi_Price

It seems the human female model of that armor is already in game – maybe it’s being held back because of lack of support for other races?

naphack.9346:

[snip]
It’s friggin PvE. They do not have a bunch of distance closers and instant spells, you HAVE to evade utilizing the evade mechanic. And if they do, that’s what the evade key is for.

All good advice, but mobs do have distance closers. Flame legion swordsmen have a very annoying leap and knockdown ability, as do some human hammer npcs (admittedly the latter is rare) – that execute in like half a second. I feel like that leap+knockdown is more or less death for any thief.

My two cents: make Vital shot have 0 cast time, just like Ranger’s Shortbow #1. Sure that skill only gives bleed from flanking, but Rangers also get a pet, so I think Vital Shot giving bleed all the time (even if shorter duration) would be completely balanced.

Edit: Whoops – it seems Crossfire (ranger’s shortbow #1) has a 1/2 activation time just as Vital Shot. Why does Vital Shot feel so much more sluggish then?

To those saying that you can use your weapons’ dodge/evade (i.e. Death Blossom, Disabling Shot, and Pistol Whip are the ones I’m thinking of off the top of my head) – how exactly do you manage to time those evades correctly?

Both Death Blossom and Disabling Shot have this weird delay for me, which means that by the time they actually start dodging, I’ve already been hit. Not to mention that DS has on more than one occasion failed to make me jump backwards, even on flat terrain. Also not to mention that DB has only a 1/4 second evade, despite its 1/2 execution time. And unlike PvP, in PvE, enemy AI always faces you in 1v1.

Pistol Whip seems to have a good (though I couldn’t find exact amount) evade time while you’re slashing the enemy, but it’s also a 3/4 second cast, and when you factor in human reflexes, it’s often nigh impossible to use it effectively to stun even after a telegraphed attack.

The only useful skill to evade for me has been Withdraw – which is great dodge/roll away/heal – and though its not spammable, it has only 15 second recharge.

This is why I’ve gone with blindness for PvE, and it works fairly well. I accidentally tried to take on two vets and three regulars with a D/P the other day, thankfully all were melee, and smoke field did well enough that I never got downed, despite getting close to it.

Normally I use Shadow Shot in smaller skirmishes, to close the distance to ranged enemies while blinding them. If timed correctly, you can also use Shadow Shot to evade ranged attacks. But more importantly, if you’re dealing with only a couple of ranged, it costs less than Black Powder shot, and is just as effective imo. Not to mention it’s great for those melee mobs when they run at you only for you to shadow step away from them

Star Ace.5207:

[snip]
I understand your point, but if the other dungeon paths are somewhat harder to farm, then this one should be more or less on the same scale. In short, all Dungeon paths should be somewhat appealing in some way-CoF path 1 shouldn’t be the preferred way to make money in-game just because it’s being exploited as the easiest. Yes, I wouldn’t like non-speed runners to be hit as well, but surely they can come up with alternate solutions so that CoF path 1 is not seen as that one option to make money (I know it necessarily isn’t, but to many players, it is.)

Alternatively, make other Dungeon paths easier, but I don’t think making Dungeons a cakewalk experience would be the way to go.

That makes sense in some way – path 1 shouldn’t be an extremely easy runthrough, while the others are much harder.

Though, think about this: No matter what you do, no two dungeon paths can have the same difficulty. It’s just impossible. Once you accept that, it’s simple and inevitable logic that there will always be one path that’s easier than the other paths, no matter what you do. People will swarm that path for farming.

This thread is about Elitism – and to be honest, I couldn’t give a rat’s kitten about people who demand gear pinging and kick for “being inefficient”. I don’t care if they do a run in 9 minutes, even if my runs with a team can take 10-15min. It’s just their playstyle and their decision on what they want to do – it really doesn’t bother me they run faster – and in overall terms I don’t think it hurts the economy at all.

Funny thing though – I bet not a lot of people running CoF1 have put effort into running p2 or p3 (admittedly, I did p2 once, didn’t exactly ‘appeal’ to running, but the end boss was a joke). The reason I say that is because I often see people just doing what someone else has already done, without trying to necessarily improve it.

For example, a karka shell route that a lot of people use is really not that efficient in my opinion. They miss out on 3-4 karkas that could be gotten with only slight change to the route – but no one does that because they just follow what other people have done blindly, thinking that its somehow the best.

I realize this is a long post, but I was wondering if any other players have interest in this sort of player generated missions. Or is it not of interest to many?

Just a few armors that are completely appropriate: (copy and paste the links because it doesn’t work through ANet’s redirection)

• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=cientifici
• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=ambaadori
• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=angeli
• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=clerici
• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=acolytei
• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=tudentfi
• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=rubrici
• http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?weight=1&race=2&color=0&sex=1&armorSet=orrianli

There’s quite a few more if you check that site.

Oddly enough, I think the female medium armors are the most revealing ones, not the light ones.

I like exploration. I’ve jumped to a number of places where there’s really nothing to find or see, just because I could. I’ve been trying out a “reach me and get 10 silver” thing in some cities but had few takers.

Expanding on that, I came up with the idea of player-given exploration missions!

= Equipment =
Cost: Laurels/karma/?? to buy one
Player buys a Exploration Mission Kit, and receives 2 items:
- Exploration Mission Objective
- Exploration Mission Signup Board

= Setup =
Using the Mission Objective item will spawn an interactive world object –
[Player’s Name] Mission Objective – at the player’s current location. This object does not do anything until the Mission is Started.
Using the Signup Board places an interactive world object –
[Player’s Name] Mission Board – at the player’s current location.

Once both items have been placed (must be in the same map), the mission host player can Use the Mission Board, with the following options:
- Starting Prize Gold: selected by the mission host player. This is deducted from his own funds
- Entry Fee: automatically set to 1/10 of the starting prize gold (amount may need re-balancing)

Once these values are set, the player can Initiate the Mission Board. The mission board then becomes a visible icon for everyone in the map (just as Commander icons are visible), and begins an automatic fixed 3 minute countdown before the Exploration Mission is Started automatically

Other players who want to participate, must go to the location of the mission board, and pay the Entry Fee. They must then remain in a small area (size of an average AoE effect) around the mission board until the countdown finishes and the Exploration Mission starts. If they leave this area prematurely, they are disqualified (entry fee may or may not be returned)

= Playing the Exploration Mission =
Once the countdown has finished, the players who have paid the entry fee are free to move around the map by any means they can.

A fixed time limit on the duration of the Mission starts counting down. These time limits should be map-size and difficulty dependant (i.e. cities have shorter times, lvl 80 areas have longer)

If a player finds the Exploration Objective, they can ‘use’ it to ‘complete’ the mission – becoming a Mission Winner.

A player hosting the mission cannot participate in the mission himself (nor can any other character from his account)

The Exploration Mission ends if the timer runs out, or if 5 people find the Exploration Objective.

Once a mission has been Initialized (allowing other players to pay entry fee) it cannot be canceled/removed. All money is stored in ‘escrow’ (for the lack of better word), and winnings are sent by Mail.

= Rewards =
The reward is Gold.
The total Prize Money is calculated like this:
Prize Money = Starting Prize Money + All Entry Fees Paid

The reward system works by giving each Winner and the host a different percentage of the Prize Money, depending on how many people, if any, found the mission objective.

The percentage of the prize money each player receives is given by the table below, where #Won is the number of people who found the objective, 1st/2nd etc. indicates the player who found the objective 1st, 2nd, etc, Host refers to the player who started the challenge, and Fee refers to the amount automatically taken (akin goldsink)
(WORK IN PROGRESS!, and apologies for the bad table formatting, but BBCode for tables doesn’t work on here :P I had to put 0% when there is no winner to format it better)

#Won | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | Host | Fee
0 | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 95% | 5%
1 | 50% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 45% | 5%
2 | 40% | 35% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 20% | 5%
3 | 35% | 30% | 20% | 0% | 0% | 10% | 5%
4 | 30% | 25% | 15% | 15% | 0% | 8% | 7%
5 | 25% | 20% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 5% | 20%

Edit: On rethinking this, there’s room for exploiting this by cheating other players from their money. A better system (well, perhaps in terms of exploiting) would be to have a fixed Fee – say 10%, and divide the rest (the 90%) amongst all the players who find the objective, and the host of the Mission.

= Feedback =
What do you guys think? I’ve tried to eliminate any chance of exploiting this as much as possible – and in fact, no new money is created – this acts as a gold sink, and only transfers money between players.

penatbater.4710:

well, 1 skill. If you have pred, you throw flaming napalms. If you have quip, you throw party streamers (same animation as the quip auto but like 5-8 at the same time)

Wait a sec. – are the legendaries, and their usual associated profession users ANet’s way of hinting to us that the Engineers are a joke, and if we want to be taken seriously we should roll a Warr/Guard… or anything else?

Oofta.8036:

I’m one of those rare Engineers that don’t do a lot with the kits. I prefer my p/p. Though I have to admit the thought of getting a bubble gun doesn’t really appeal to me.

To be honest, the bubble gun would be funnier on a Thief. I wonder what Unload looks like with dual Quips.

But in case of Engineers, weapon kits do a lot of things better than our actual weapons. We get a lot more abilities if we use kits, than if we don’t. Even at best estmates, the average weapon/kit usage amongst most engineers would probably be 50/50. I know for a fact that my engineer, and two other guildies, spend more than 90% of the fights in kits.

darkace.8925:

Diy.5296:

Anyways, CoF p1 really needs to buffed to make it harder.

I agree, but these forums are going to insufferable for a few days after the increase in difficult is implemented (if it ever is).

What are you trying to accomplish? Eliminate runners? The only way to do that is to put up hard walls that don’t go down until some enemies have been defeated.
Besides that, no matter how hard you make a dungeon, there’s always going to be people running through skipping as many fights as they can, and optimizing fights.

Besides, the moment you make a fight harder, it hurts not just those who have gotten really good at a it, but everyone else too, even those other people were having a hard time before.

Fyrebrand.4859:

[snip]
Or #3: Okay, baubles. What about them? Is this something you think should be extended to the rest of the game? Do we really need yet another currency? What else would we buy with baubles, and how would they coexist with laurels, karma, guild commendations, gold, etc.?

They would be the ultimate currency, of course. Making these new ‘baubles’ be different from the current ones dropped in SAB, and define new exchange rates:
100 Baubles = 1 Legendary weapon
1 Bauble = 10 Laurels + 50,000 karma + 1 gold + 10 guild commendations + 10 battle commendations + 10 Dungeon tokens from each Dungeon

Not sure if this will be less or more grindy than current legendary weapon setup …

Arganthium.5638:

Wait, somebody who is coming to the thief from another profession, not telling us “LOL THIEF IS OP EASYMODE”? 0_o

Look here brothers and sisters, this strange phenomenon may never happen again.

Maybe it doesn’t happen on the forums that often (I haven’t been visiting this place long enough to know), but in game, when I started a thief about a month ago, I ran into the “I got aggro, now I’m dead” wall ..of.. death. Having spoken with some other thieves, they all tell me that leveling is really a pain with thief, and that the squishiness is just unbelievable.

I don’t want to be a freakin warrior, but playing Thief (at least in <40 pve, which is what I’ve done), you’re really punished for any mistake you make. Let one enemy at your level hit you? Say goodbye to a 1/4 of your hp.

I’ve been using blindness as my main defensive tool, with a d/p or s/p, but that doesn’t work well on spread out groups of ranged enemies. The shortbow and d/d dodge abilities are a joke in my view. They always seem to have a delay before activation, so I can’t seem to use it properly even when I see enemy telegraphing its attacks.

Anyway, small rant that this was, my point is, I don’t know anyone who claims thieves to be ‘op easymode’.

Edit: As for spamming HS – seems like another delayed skill that’s a waste of initiative in a lot of cases. The auto-attack is less dmg for <50% hp, but its faster and doesn’t waste initiative. On most enemies I ran into one of two situations – either they would end up dying faster if i use auto-attack, or they wouldn’t die quickly enough with HS spam, which means I just wasted valuable initiative that I need to stay alive for the remaining of the fight.
The only time I found HS valuable is in chasing enemies… and even then given that I use D/P, the #3 is an insta-teleport to enemy. I’m not sure what ANet intended that skill for to be honest.

What it feels like is that I should be doing everything I can to completion now, before ANet decides to revisit it and make it much more difficult in the future. Heh, maybe I’m too late :/

I can see the S.A.B. mechanics, if taken to SAB pvp, become an e-sport. After all, no balancing to do – everyone has the exact same skills!
Wouldn’t that be something?

Has map completion always required WvW?
Why does it require WvW? Aren’t some structures and thus poi likely to almost never be captured, even if your server is dominating?

I haven’t checked my server in some time, but at one point I understand we were doing pretty badly, even in our homelands.

It’s also not just a matter of personal determination anymore – if your server isn’t doing so well in wvw, it seems you don’t stand much of a chance for world completion!

Rhysati.4932:

ZenonSeth.5739:

Maybe I’m missing something, but we’re talking about ‘stalking’ in-game?
Why is this an issue?
This isn’t the real world, they don’t know you, they just follow some pixels in game. There is nothing they can do to you, or your character, except annoy you, and that’s only if you let them.

Just go about your daily business as though they’re just another random npc or something – worrying about this stuff, or giving any sort of feedback to people like that (i.e. saying “leave me alone” or “stop following me”) only gives these people the attention they want, and lets them know that they have an effect on you.
Just ignore them, they’ll get bored and go away.

You seem to be of the opinion that online stalking is okay. Unfortunately, the courts disagree with you.

[snip]

No, I am not. I wrote several lengthy posts after that one explaining my view, and why I posted that.
Please stop putting words in my mouth.

Tolmos.8395:

[snip]
A girl who plays GW2 with a violent ex-bf who plays GW2 and is stalking her and trying to catch her when she is home will likely be getting a knock on the door not long after she logs on. The only option atm is for her to just not log on, losing yet 1 more thing in her life she enjoys because the current system favors the stalker.

Wow, that escalated quickly.
You’re talking about one extremely specific situation in which another person – the “violent ex-bf” – has some prior information about the persons’s personal life, including a GW2 account name, as well as home address (which cannot be obtained through GW2 alone, but must be known prior). I also have high doubts that GW2 would be a stalker’s first choice to track someone when they already know where they live.

However, I don’t disagree with the main point – to not let blocked people know if you’re online nor let them see your location.

Let me say this again: I wanted to tell people worrying about purely GW2 stalking that there’s little reason to worry as there are no means (solely by GW2) for a stalker to obtain your information unwillingly.

People who have stalkers in real life, akin to the the situation described by Tolmos, have good reason to want these measurements (and again, I agree with that), but should also be aware that GW2 is by far not a major point of concern when it comes to stalkers, nor is it even close to a best way to find out some personal information about you (again, see my response above to Tolmos’s situation).

Simply put, this oversight in GW2 will neither give new information to stalkers, nor would it be of major use to stalkers. It’s a minor issue, considering the topic and other associated problems, as a whole.

lethlora.1320:

[snip]
you heard it here—harassment on the internet doesn’t matter. Because, yes, a real life stalker could totally not stalk you over the internet.

I feel like you’re putting words in my mouth.
Let’s expand:
Harassment on the Internet usually means someone stalking you on your social site account, via your email, or even digital harassment via text messages and such.
That absolutely does matter, and is not at all what I’m referring to.

What I’m talking about is the harassment not of you per-se, but that of your digital character in a virtual world where the person stalking you has absolutely no means of obtaining your personal information (or they shouldn’t if ANet has done their job which I believe they have), or harming you (or your character) in any way.

You can also ignore anything that person says simply by putting them on your block list, thus eliminating anything they can say to you to upset you.

So, please, don’t put words in my mouth to make it seem like I’m dismissing Internet Stalking as a whole, when it is not what I’m doing.

Rouven makes what I think is the only point – that if you block someone, they should not be able to tell where you are. Despite that, it’s still entirely insignificant and irrelevant to your physical and mental health if they have this information – because again, this is constrained 100% within a virtual world, and is not the equivalent to what’s commonly referred to as “internet stalking”

I’m not posting this to dismiss the claims of those who feel they’re being stalked – I’m posting it to hopefully alleviate some of those concerns and worry, trying to explain why there’s next to no way that this virtual stalking can harm you, as I tried to explain.

Aeonblade.8709:

I feel like skills and gear are handled well. If there was one thing I hated about other MMO’s it was half my screen being taken up by situational skill filled hotbars. I don’t miss having 100 abilities at a time at all.
[snip]

It’s not about having 100 abilities at the same time. Guild Wars 1 had 100s of skills/spells/signets/shouts/etc available, where some were elites that needed to be captured through difficult combat with bosses, and others weren’t available unless player progressed through the PvE campaign.

Yet that game had only 8 skills you could use at any one given time (and back then you could only switch them out in towns/outposts)

I don’t think any of us here want our screens cluttered by skills, but tbh way back when GW2 was announced, I expected a ton of obtainable skills, and had hopes that some skills would require solving puzzles/dungeons/story etc (you know, would require player skill) to obtain.

Obtainable skills like that would also give more sense to exploration (say you put it in an optional path of a dungeon, or a hard to reach place on a map)

That’s my two cents anyway.

Maybe I’m missing something, but we’re talking about ‘stalking’ in-game?
Why is this an issue?
This isn’t the real world, they don’t know you, they just follow some pixels in game. There is nothing they can do to you, or your character, except annoy you, and that’s only if you let them.

Just go about your daily business as though they’re just another random npc or something – worrying about this stuff, or giving any sort of feedback to people like that (i.e. saying “leave me alone” or “stop following me”) only gives these people the attention they want, and lets them know that they have an effect on you.
Just ignore them, they’ll get bored and go away.

Ayrilana.1396:

I completely agree.

The game is grindy because people choose to make it that way.

People choose to make it grindy because the game rewards grinding.

So you say that you don’t need to have that stuff, you just want to?
Ok, you don’t need to grind, you just want to have exotic/ascended gear.
Ok, you don’t need to have ascended/exotic gear for pve/wvw, you just want to win.
Ok, you don’t need to win at pve wvw all the time, you just want to have fun.
Ok, you don’t need to have fun, you just want to enjoy the game.
Ok, you don’t need to enjoy the game… just quit and go do something else.

killcannon.2576:

Give it about a month before there are topics posted every day saying something along the lines of “I can’t get a dungeon group because everyone wants 10k plus ap”, way to bring the community together Anet!!! Thumbs up!!

This.
Because now, thanks to leaderboards, some will think a player’s total worth in PvX can be boiled down to a number. Thumbs up!!!

I’ve been using a D/P on my thief for most fights. Focus on one target, usually any ranged enemy. #3 blind/teleport to them, dagger them a few times, dodge away if I see any melee crowding me, then as they run towards me again, #3 to my target again, finish off.

I was thinking of trying P/D as my alt weapon for the #3 there as well to jump away from target, but that means no shortbow, which works great against tight groups of enemies. Sometimes I feel like Thief needs 3 weapon sets…

Things that don’t work too well for me:
Smoke Field on pistol #5.. just costs a lot and leaves my lower lvl thief short on initiative.
Death Blossom – just never can get the timing right. Maybe it’s lag, but it doesn’t feel like it’s instant activation at all, causing me to get hit regardless. It’s also only a 1/4 second evade, so you have to be bloody accurate with timing.

That’s been the name of the game for me – avoid getting hit as much as possible. I started with blindness because the evade skills seem to require far more precise timing, which I lack, so I more often than not get killed.

Dimes.7281:

Copy and paste it into your address bar. Guild Wars forum doesn’t recognize it unless it starts with www.

Actually, that’s not why. Links without www work fine. It’s the ; in the link that’s messing it up. I remember reading somewhere on here that it’s a known issue of the forum software.

You know, I posted a build (which had flaws, since I could actually mix runes) on here, aimed at +100% burn duration. With the Flamethrower primary that meant you’d get 2s of burning, which not only meant 2 ticks of damage, but also the additional + 10% extra damage on targets that are on fire from the primary attack.

I saw a bunch of replies saying basically, build isn’t useful, go for might stacking.
I tried that, with HGH, and all elixers, I had 18 stacks of might at the same time.

It didn’t feel any more powerful than a +100% burn duration build. You can also get decent condition damage with that build, I had around 1350 condition damage. I’m fairly certain you could get more since I didn’t have the right accessories equipped to maximize it.

Basically I feel that burning gets underestimated. It is a short duration, high damage condition, so it usually lasts the full duration on almost any enemy. Some objections are that on boss fights, people with higher condition damage would basically ‘mute’ your burning if they apply their own – but in those cases a) burning is still a low duration thing, so yours will tick at some point, and b) If that many people are involved, your personal DPS doesn’t necessarily require all that optimization.

I’m somewhat reluctant to post on here, since I don’t do regular number crunching to test all the builds I try. That’s just my two cents, take it or leave it.

Anvi.1802:

[snip]
Do you think the devs had all that in mind when they decided to apply that 4s revealed debuff change ?

I don’t know. But I really hope they did have all that in mind, as otherwise it would mean they are doing far less game design and analysis than they should be doing.
If you (a player who wasn’t involved in creating the Thief class) can do this analysis, the devs should be doing the same thing as you did, as a bare minimum.

I only recently (past month) got my enthusiasm to try out Thief again (after sucking at it at launch), but these changes aren’t giving me a warm feeling about the profession.

CETheLucid.3964:

There are no races among humans IRL. Just us.

In the Guild Wars universe, the word has a legitimate use in differentiating the various sentient beings.

The term “race” in real life can refer to (amongst other things) the biological classification of plant and animal life, where it classifies small genetic variations of the same species (this is not applicable to humans, as far as I know).

It can also refer, as its most commonly used when talking about humans, about the social, ethnic, geographic and/or genetic background of a certain group of humans (i.e. Caucasians, African-descendants, Middle-Eastern, Asian, etc)

Both of these uses is completely valid in real life, and neither refers to anything outside the ‘species’ to which it refers.

In fantasy, ‘race’ in my opinion is a very badly misused word – it should be called Species. Especially in the GW2 universe – because, you see, the definition of a ‘species’ is the ability to procreate with each other (hence why all humans on Earth are the same species). Since it has been confirmed by Word Of God that inter-species procreation is impossible in Tyria, that’s even more good reason why the Charr, Norn, Humans, Asura and Sylvari should be called “species” and not “races”.

Of course, this is just fantasy fiction, so it doesn’t make a huge difference either way.

Regarding the moral high ground:
From the point of view of the humans born in Ascalon, they had done nothing wrong to the Charr to warrant the Searing. It would of course be the same with the Charr – newly born Charr would not have any real gripe with modern day humans – no wrong was directly done to them.

It’s the perpetuation of old hatred that fueled that war, and it was stupid.
Fast forward to modern day, I don’t think any living charr or human can have a gripe with the other due to those events. However, I still feel sorry for the ghosts in Ascalon, since they’re essentially stuck in a state that won’t let them let go of the past.

Still, being human in GW1, I don’t think the player EVER did anything as horrific to the Charr as the charr did to humans in that game. Let’s face it, the Charr were MADE to be the bad guys in that game, they were made to be ‘evil’, and ANet succeeded in their portrayal in my opinion.

Now ANet wants me to forget their ‘evil’ classification of those Charr?
What’s next? They’ll label the Dragons as being only one faction of a greater whole, and thus we should be friends with them? Or the Sons of Svanir?

On one hand it’s perfectly acceptable that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are just different points of view. On the other, none of the actual gameplay even comes close to suggesting that. Every single event and story in-game will portray someone as good and someone as evil. It’s hard to think in terms of shades of gray, when the gameplay is so black and white.

Basically, I don’t blame the Charr for what’s happened to the ghosts in Ascalon – I blame ANet.

This was touched upon, but I want to emphasize two things:

1) Putting a level limit to enter SAB would only give a huge advantage to people with more character slots. Meaning they would simply level their characters up to the level limit, and earn plenty of baubles where the rest of us poor slobs would be at a disadvantage.

2) Alt-grinding for baubles takes work. I did it a few times because I really wanted to get up to 50 bauble bubbles. It’s not something trivial, or something easy. You do not AFK from your PC and receive rewards. You play the game – even if running through the levels, it still takes effort.

At the end, this is what most games are: Those willing to spend more time and effort into a game tend to be better off.

Oh, and
3) Limiting the chest drops to be per-account would mean some serious limitations on the baubles you can get. Means weapon skin prices are only going to skyrocket more, which means that a few lucky ones will benefit, and skill or time invested will have less and less to do with you getting a skin.

Look at it from this point of view: Running those chests generally earns skins only for yourself. Skin drops are rare enough where I don’t think it breaks the economy – it just lets people who want to get a guaranteed skin (for 50 bauble bubbles) put in an amount of effort they want to get it.

BTW from all my runs, I have GS and Longbow skins. I only ever got 1 skin drop (shortbow). I highly question why you think this unfair. (considering the amount of time I put in the box)

I’m making this build, and thought I post some thoughts, and get some feedback:

First equipment:
= Weapons: =
-Pistol/Pistol – both with Superior Rune of Smoldering = +20% burn duration

= Armor: =
Whatever stats – I think Rampager is best for the crit/condition, but Berserker is also good.
But most importantly for runes: You definitely need rune X where X is either Baelfire, Balthazar of Flame Legion rune.
- 2 Minor runes of X : effect 2 is +5% burn duration
- 2 Major runes of X : effect 2 is +10% burn duration
- 2 Superior runes of X : effect 2 is +15% burn duration

= Traits: =
20/30/0/20/0

Explanation:
20 in Explosives gives you chance to burn on crit (Incendiary Powder) and a +20% condition duration
30 in Firearms – Juggernaut is NOT the most important trait here – Napalm Specialist is for the +20% burn duration
20 in Alchemy for the +15% dmg bonus of the Flamethrower

= Vegetable Pizza. =
Finally, this is why I call it the Veggie Pizza build. You see, from the sigils and the three types of runes you get:
10%(sigil) + 10%(sigil) + 5%(minor) + 10%(major) + 15%(superior) = +50% burn duration
From the Napalm Specialst Trait: +20% burn duration
From 20 points in Explosives: +20% condition duration.

This adds up to 50% + 20% + 20% = +90% burn duration. Now, I could have put 10 more points into the Explosives trait line. The reason I didn’t is because I wanted 20 points in Alchemy for the very handy +15% FT/EG damage.
But how to get that last 10% bonus on burn duration?

Easy: Veggie Pizza gives you +16% condition duration, which puts you at the +106% burn duration. Veggie pizza also costs like 2 copper on the TP (at the time of posting), so you can stack up easily.

= What this aims to do: =
Primary attack of flamethrower now burns for 2 seconds, doing double burning damage. Since you also have the Incendiary Powder trait, you also start applying burn 33% of the crit hits. So, basically, you can nearly keep your target always on fire, just with FT’s primary attack.

That attack also does + 10% extra damage on targets that are on fire, so that’s even more damage bonus for you.
Here’s the build link: (copy paste, cause of ; in link)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqKGRA9Awwr7SkCMrx+ogteQA;TIADBmCA

This shows some other traits i picked that increase condition damage, and do on crit effect. However, I didn’t see option to equip a minor or major rune, so the armor isn’t shown with the appropriate runes.

= Problems with Build =
Enemies that have Immunity to Burning. That is all.
Condition removal is not really a concern, since you’ll be applying burning very often.

= Why this won’t work in PvP =
As far as I can tell, you can’t apply minor and major runes to pvp gear. Only superior onces. Sad, because this build exploits that.

= Testing =
I did try this build, and from what I saw, my primary flamethrower attack applied a burn that caused damage twice – meaning that I did in fact, obtain the +100% burn duration, even if the tooltip does not indicate so.
The main thing I was concerned about is the +burn duration stacking from the minor/major/superior runes. It in fact, does seem to stack

Thoughts? Comments? Comments help

In response to the original question:
Besides the fact that I (as a human) relate best to Humans, I can also give one other reason why I’m human:

They’re the underdog in the world right now. Out of all the races, they’ve taken the most beating, and currently least powerful (imho) race. And I like playing as the underdog.

Zenguy.6421:

It’s true that the Eng is harder work than any other class for comparable levels of performance.

[snip]

You know, I went to the Thief forums, since I was leveling a thief (my engineer is already 80), and someone posted something almost identical to what you said there.

To be honest, I have a hell of a lot more fun and easier time with engineer than with thief. I don’t know how people compare levels of performance. One is obviously your dps, but that’s… so… petty (and I don’t mean to insult anyone who tries to solely maximize their dps)

I have fun when playing engineer, even if my build isn’t that optimal. I’ve been using FT build around Juggernaut, and maybe it’s not as high dps as granades, but it is still quite fun to play.

I may try out granades soon, since I left them at lvl 40, it seems like it might be fun as well.

Just out of curiosity – what is a ‘decent crit chance’ ?
I have an 80 engineer running with a random FT build in pve, but I’ve been meaning to switch to nades. My crit chance is around 49%, but my gear isn’t exactly maxed for precision.

So, what would you consider a decent crit rating? And how much would be max crit chance for engineer if we got all +precision gear?

BlackIce.5276:

ZenonSeth.5739:

I’m telling you, ANet’s RNG uses those last 4 digits appended to your account name as a seed. Which basically means you’re stuck with whatever luck you got from the beginning! Certainly would explain the consistently bad luck I have :P

Do you have evidence to back up this claim? I’m legitimately curious if this is true, because it would explain a hell of a lot.

No, I don’t, and as Mirta said, this is a conspiracy theory. I was only kidding when saying that. As Mirta pointed out, the resources to do this would be quite a lot, though I think it’s still doable, I doubt it’s the actual situation. Basically, I was just making a joke.

Also, even if ANet did something like that, they wouldn’t reveal those numbers to the public I think. (or would they? Hiding things in plain sight IS the best way to hide stuf… mwahaha) (srsly, I’m joking)

Dustfinger.9510:

Zaxares.5419:

I wish there were some way for us to help them to move on, rather than hang around forever, frozen in time and forced to constantly relive an endless war.

Ghostbore technology. You’re welcome ;P

No no no. You have the wrong approach.

There’s a little known dynamic event that occurs in the Shattered Keep in Sparkfly Fen that involves an Asura named Scholar Yorix.

It seems Yorix has invented a machine that can free ghosts from their ghostly confines (such as that of pirates to kill everyone who approaches their treasure).
The DE has 2 parts – escort and protect. After you escort him down to meet Veteran Captain Ferrine, who he then proceeds to test his machine on, and successfully frees her, which makes her become friendly and she then proceeds to fight the risen on behalf of the Priory.

When a friend and I ran into this event, we were half expecting Yorix to free all the ghosts, and for him to lead an army of ghosts against the risen on the beach (this was going on roughly at the same time as the nearby Ash Horizon event) – much ala LotR style ghost army.

Sadly, it’s only one ghost being freed, but I think this gives us hope in freeing the ghosts in Ascalon. Hopefully Yorix will become a major part in the future events there (I’m looking at you ANet)

Obsidian.1328:

[snip]
To stay on topic…yeah, kinda sucks for those ghosts.

I think ANet knew what they were doing with the ghosts would upset some players. They were aware that the ghost thing would touch on some nerves. This is why they had Gwen be at Ebonhawke at the time of the Foefire, since they knew making players fight against her as a Ghost would probably upset quite a few.

I know people like Kasha, Nente, Vassar, etc. were not major characters in the game, but I still have a perma pre-searing character (ranger nontheless) who has been taught by some of these people. It’s kind of upsetting to have them be killed by what I consider to be one of the distant relatives of my character in pre-searing.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The chance of not getting a skin in 75 chests is actually pretty decent, to be honest (22%). Heck, there’s a 13% chance of not getting a skin after 100 runs! Basically, the take away from that is that you shouldn’t necessarily expect a skin after 50 runs because statistically RNG could hate you.

Thankfully after 50 runs (assuming 3 chests per run) you’ll have 300 bauble bubbles, enough for 6 skins. The only difference being that this will make you 6 gold poorer, instead of earning you potentially 15g or so

PolarTank.5902:

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s 1 in 50.

you say that but I disagree cause RNG is bad in this game.

I’m telling you, ANet’s RNG uses those last 4 digits appended to your account name as a seed. Which basically means you’re stuck with whatever luck you got from the beginning! Certainly would explain the consistently bad luck I have :P

Frost.2908:

[snip]
Yes, you can get a skin from all of the boss chests… I’ve personally gotten a skin from each chest, although I haven’t received a skin since the client update… I wonder if DR is a factor here or if its just pure luck?

DR? Also, whatever you meant by that abbreviation, I’m sure that’s it’s pure luck.
I’m going to do more runs when I get home today, but it’s getting really frustrating that I continuously get nothing. I’ve done runs both solo, and with group of 5, both completionist style (getting all baubles at one run, and most in other runs) and speed run to the end boss chest.

If anything, the fact that I haven’t gotten anything despite a variety of approaches shows that the system doesn’t take those into consideration and is only based on individual luck (or ANet’s RNG in this case)

Zaxares.5419:

[snip]
While I would gladly bring justice to the Flame Legion curs that murdered Althea (and I often did, whenever I passed through the area on my way to Dragon’s Gullet), saying that you’d murder all modern Charr for their ancestor’s actions is like saying you want to kill every modern German who has a National Socialist in their family history. Or that you want to drop nuclear bombs on New York and San Francisco today in retaliation for the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Well, first off this is a game, so when we say we’d kill all Charr we’re not even close to what you’re comparing to.

Second, any charr, regardless of their legion, will do to any human what they did to Althea without much objection or protest.

Don’t give me that “charr can be friendly crap” – their history clearly shows them out to kill pretty much everyone who’s not charr (or heck, anyone who’s not their legion or warband). The only reason they’ve stopped is to fight the dragons, after which I fully expect them to go back to killing everyone else.

Nike.2631:

[snip]
Neither of you are to bad luck yet. 400 would be bad luck. Less than 100 is well within standard deviation .

I know that statistically you may be correct, but try being one of those people who’s been running since release, and hasn’t gotten any skins. It certainly feels like back luck :P

You have my Axe.
- no, seriously, I’m hoping they release Axe too

Josh Foreman.8250:

It’s 1 in 50.

This is cool, because we actually got pretty close to estimating a 2% drop rate earlier.
This is also sad, because it means I’ve been horribly unlucky.

Another evening of running, another evening without any skins. I know this isn’t a complaint thread, it’s just getting on my nerves how others can get upwards of 4 skins seemingly so easily. :/