ASP.8093

It's the new one they just added, of course. You get it from the same achievements you use to unlock the armor. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decade_of_the_Dragons

Holo has a lot of trouble with damage output besides a few burst skills (and the Photon Forge fingerguns are incredibly anemic in SPvP/WvW, so it's way less burst than in PvE) so any class with a lot of health and sustain is pretty strong against it, in my experience.

Proof of Legend is some kind of mystery object at this point, right? They haven't yet put in whatever vendor/achievement uses it?

If you're willing to plink down all that money on a new account, why not just… Buy an extra character slot. You can have 95% of the "new player" experience just playing a new character from scratch, and once you've refamiliarized yourself with the game you'll be able to go back to your other characters and enjoy all the stuff you've built up previously.

Am I the only person who looks forward to free dye picks in presents and doesn't really care that much about the special skins?

I think if you search your heart, you will realize that martial arts isn't about getting hit in the face with a sword 20 times, even in wuxia fantasy movies.

You can try it out in your guildhall. The overall experience is rather "rocket tag" since lots of abilities hit for like 15k damage.

Personally? I really like Thief in Story/OW (mostly Deadeye, sometimes Dareevil). It feels quick, flexible, kinetic. I also really like the class in competitive (Deadeye in WvW; sometimes Daredevil in SPvP) and cooperative (Specter DPS/support) play. Thanks to the Initiative system, Thieves have an easy rotation in PvE and a lot of tactical flexibility in competitive play. But the can also feel a bit fragile and one-note. Also, like, Core Thief has some gaps that the especs fill in (a much stronger melee playstyle for PvE Daredevil; better ranged options and a far, far stronger resource management for PvE Deadeye; condi power, resilience, and group support for PvE Specter). You'll want to pick those up instead of staying on Core for long.

The problem with this suggestion is that most people are gonna "lock" all their characters and then the procedure is just "press an extra button" but it doesn't actually provide any more of a nudge to double-check things. From Anet's side, I think the thing they can do to help you avoid mistakes is to pop up a fuller character summary on the delete screen: your character's name, class, total hero points or map completion percentage, and some listing showing the exotic/ascended gear they still have in their inventory or equipped. From the players' side, though, folks really need to get in the habit of stripping their characters of valuables before they delete them anyway. And the last stage of that process is leaving your characters in their underwear or a silly outfit instead of just their normal-looking styles. Much, much harder to make mistakes then.

As others have already said, I recommend using Heart of the Mists (the SPvP lobby) to "test run" especs and level 80 builds when you start a character. The *performance* in PvE won't be 100% the same, but the priority is just to experience the "flow" of a build — the kind of intangibles you can't quite get a feel for by just watching a video or whatever — anyway. Beyond that, try to reorient your thinking a little bit… You know how you unlock various skills and trait while you're leveling? And you can just change them later if that's not your thing? Think of especs like that: sure, there's a significant investment involved, but you can't really "choose wrong" in the long run since you will just keep on unlocking specs anyway. And it costs nothing to swap once you've already spent the hero points and picked up suitable weapons. Also, most especs give you to most of their special stuff right away: unlocking it gives you all the weapon skills, and the first Minor trait turns on the specialization-specific special abilities (like Reaper Shroud, Photon Forge, Jade Mech, the Firebrand Tomes, &c.). So for 40 hero points (which is 4 endgame hero challenges), you can start playing the spec and building up the rest of it, or move onto a different one if you change your mind. For the masteries and mounts and stuff, that's also global across all characters. So dabbling in different characters/builds won't hurt you there. (It actually helps a little, since you get faster progression thanks to the extra story and exploration XP.)

Lol. We keep telling you, over and over: Shadow Arts Deadeye is better than ever. Consistently easy access to 3 initiative on dodge really helps DE win actual fights against actual decent players. We are seeing an unprecedented Deadeye renaissance in SPvP and people are consistently naming it one of the top specs for roaming as well. The main build to suffer from the Shadow Arts changes was Shadow Arts D/P because they lost the Hide in Shadows stealth extension and stealth-on-Steal. Neither of these things were high-value for Deadeye; or even taken by most Deadeyes at all. Furthermore, we've all had the experience of easily chaining "permastealth" with 2 sec stealth on dodge pre-patch, and you're still het up about 4 sec stealth on dodge being reduced to 3 sec stealth on dodge in PvE. For your "gathering build." Which apparently doesn't use combo fields or whatever. Come on now. Come onnn!

Deadeye is stronger now than it was before. More cleanse, more initiative, even a bit faster. You have to play a bit different than before but your burst hasn't suffered at all and it's actually easier to kill various high-health/armor tanky condi-spam builds. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For pure DPS, Thief's always gonna have a 3-3-3-3-3 rotation instead of a 2-5-3-4-2 rotation because of how the skills work. And that's fine, it's fine! "Easy rotation in PvE, serious versatility in SPvP/WvW" is completely reasonable design for an MMO class, imo. A lot of raid builds for cooldown classes have you only using about half your weapon skills anyway. And we do actually have plenty of encounters where skills that break defiance, reposition you, or evade are high value. So it's not like it's *never* okay to use Vault or Death's Retreat or whatever.

Err, if anything it's easier now since you get a bunch of the mats you need while doing "Return To" for the legendary amulet.

why are you like this

Usually, you can see some drop rate research info on the Talk page associated with the item in the wiki. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Magic-Warped_Bundle In this case, an approximate 2% chance means… 98% chance of no clovers on opening a single bundle 60% chance (0.98^25) of no clovers when opening 25 bundles

The solution is: Don't do that.

With Tomes and WvW currency, most of this process is instant. Without WvW currency, fully unlocking an espec takes like 1-3 hours at most. Doesn't FF14 still make you have to level/gear each class and all that?

Death Blossom is nice for evading some damage, but just ranging enemies is also a good way to evade a bunch of damage.

Let's just start with this example. Why, why, why do you have zero cleanse? Why aren't you running Shadow's Embrace? Cleansing sigil? Hide in Shadows? Signet of Agility? (Heck, even some of your weapon skills are condition cleanses.) Why are you just attacking over and over into evades? You don't really seem to be playing to the class' strengths very much, from your description. Just kinda repeatedly trying to burst someone and floundering in frustration if that doesn't do the trick.

Which MMOs, though? Final Fantasy has a massive amount of resources devoted to its development; nearly every other subscription-based MMOG isn't doing notably better than GW2.

Grenade Barrage is the grenade kit toolbelt skill, it's on a 25-second cooldown. It generates six grenades in a semi-random splash pattern. You can suffer big damage if you get hit by all six, and they're criticals, and the engineer has other buffs (like 25 Might and Explosive Entrance). This skill is strong in WvW but has been severely nerfed in SPvP. In the Explosives trait line, which you absolutely run if you're doing 'Nades in WvW/SPvP, Blast Shield gives you ~1500 barrier upon hitting with Explosive Entrance (a damage buff engi gets at the start of a fight and also after dodging). Most Engineer builds will likely have the Emergency Elixir trait, which gives another ~3000 barrier (+3 sec Protection) when your health drops below 1/3, on a (de-facto) 48-second cooldown. Scrapper has a few more barrier sources as well, mostly on damaging an enemy. Overall this means that Engineers will have consistent small barrier application and one big hit of emergency barrier (+ Protection) when you've almost killed them. You can reduce how much barrier they get by dodging/blocking their attacks after they dodge (when they have Explosive Entrance active, their right hand will glow orange). When the Emergency Elixir trait fires, either burst through it or just hold off for a few seconds until the barrier/protection expire. (If they use AED at the same time — this has a healing-skill cast animation and then a little special icon on their stat bar — especially, just hold off for a few seconds so they don't get the free big heal out of it.)

I am able to do the full Winterberry circuit in like 4 minutes with a Raptor and a basic Crit Strikes Deadeye PvE build.

What game mode? What are you hoping to do while stealthed? This matters a lot for putting together an actual build.

Look at the new Power Mechanist vs. the old Sword Holo, for example. (There's literally no Holo build at all on the Snow Crows website right now.) The robot just sorta auto-attacks for you while Holo has to do a rotation with Photon Forge and toolbelt skills. Okay, fine, that's just the inherent playstyle differences between classes. And Photon Forge will overheat if you mess up, but let's just agree that little bit of "don't touch the stove!" is a core part of the fun of Holo. You know what else happens, though? Your DPS will plummet if you *underheat,* because of how Laser's Edge (and Enhanced Capacity Storage Unit, if you're playing solo) works. Refraction Cutter, Laser Disk, Prime Light Beam all have the same constraint as well. Playing Sword, your DPS will take a hit if you don't swap to grenades to get your Explosive Temper stacks up at just the right time. You rely on a ton of situational modifiers to upkeep your damage, which means a scuffed rotation has more impact than just suboptimal value from your cooldowns: a whole bunch of damage modifiers just turn off so even your autos lose a lot of power. (And scuffed rotations happen all the time in actual play, because you have to deal with the boss mechanics.) Power Mechanist has very little of this. Stand within 450 range and all the modifiers just line up. Use Shrapnel Grenade after Blunderbuss for big value, no big deal if you don't. That doesn't mean it's just easier, it means it's more practical because the specific mechanics of the fight will very rarely disrupt your build's resource flow. (Same reason Condi Specter is worlds better than Condi Deadeye, for example.) With Mechanist, you've got stronger passive healing and a stun break skill that can instantly reposition you out of harm's way, as well — it's better in the hands of a less capable player, it's better in the hands of an average player, it's probably just better in the hands of an incredibly good player who's mastered all that extra Holo-stuff juggling as well.