Nomad.4301

I guess specter doesn't count as a "Thief" then. Been waiting since launch to actually use it as a support as was (apparently) intended. I hope whatever changes they have planned for the June patch are big ones because a few % adjustments are not going to be enough to get me to play it again, even if they increased its healing by 100% the mechanics and clunkiness are just too much for me to bother over any other dps/support options.

For me and many others in the same boat, both the shards and tickets are equally worthless, I'm personally sitting on over 31k tickets and many others I know are sitting on even more. So anet deciding to throw tickets at people for trivial actions means virtually nothing to me as there is nothing to use said "rewards" on, as for the ranks it really boils down to an extra ~32s every 6 minutes during an active defense which is kinda terrible compared to earning 20-30g in ~45 minutes from fractals. If they want to use skirmish tickets/shards as the bulk of the "rewards" (since they don't want to "damage" the economy) then we need better things to spend them on, armor is great, but once you have it you never need it again. Something like consumables, siege skins, trinkets etc... would give people something to look forward to, until then tickets will keep piling up along side badges and those useless emblems.

I'd say the problem lied more in just how many T6 mats those crafting coffers contained, the amount you could get in just an hour of attacking/defending T3s was enough that over time it would see the market on T6 end up where the T5 market currently is (aka worthless) which would also ironically reduce the value of heavy loot bags we've been getting since day 1. I expect to see the drop rate on the Crafting Material Coffers reduced significantly, not sure if anything else warranted nerfs except for maybe the amount of liquid Wxp you could get.

Going to be honest, after about an hour of playing, the rewards seem almost too generous imo, for context I mostly roam but was defending SMC for about 30 minutes on a single-target/support class. In addition to the "normal" WvW loot (reward track, heavy loot bags, etc..) I got: 4 thimbles of WXP (2500 ea) 1 Swig of WXP (10k) 45 "crafting material coffers" these had a LOT of T6 mats in them given how frequently you get them, about as much in those 45 as you'd normally get from 100+ Heavy Loot bags i'd say 6 rare loot bags (1 unid rare each) 10 Grandmaster mark shards 5 rare Unid, 30+ green unid and 5 "bags of gear" (the kind you get from Silverwastes) I also got some tickets/badges but since those went into the currency tab I've no idea how many. Overall a decent haul considering I barely felt like I did anything and that's mostly just from defending a single (T3 SM) objective and capping 2 paper towers after 30 or so minutes, I tagged maybe like 50 players and a few guards. Part of me worries that if it's always like this then it will promote farming/afking but it did seem to require a decent amount of participation to hit the "gold" rank.

For what it's worth I hope you're right and they are expanding to produce more content, even if it's at a slightly higher overall cost, hell even if they just somehow return to post PoF levels of output through sheer management improvements it'll be an improvement. I'm just left jaded by other studios that have followed a similar model like ESO and SWToR and end up releasing 2-3 hour long "DLCs" for $15-20 every few months and even Anet themselves have pivoted several times following announcements like this in the past (Icebrood). Like i said in a previous post I'm not opposed to spending money, I'd just rather get more for more and not less for more.

How exactly are they going to accomplish this by just changing the model of when (ex. yearly instead of every other year) we pay for content? An increase in production speed with more varied content that is "better" and more consistent is something you can only achieve by either hiring more staff and expanding the studio (as opposed to the recent layoffs) or dropping a significant amount of other content (PvP, WvW, raids, fractals etc..) on the cutting-room floor in favor of what they believe we actually want, which is seemingly what they've been doing for years hence the neglect of rest of the game in favor of open-world. Ultimately they will be making more money off of us by doing this (obviously, that's the point) but unless they reinvest that back into the studio (unlikely) I fail to see how this is a good thing content-wise because realistically the same amount of people can only produce so much in a given year. The only real advantage that I see from this is the "varied content" because like ESO, having more expansions allows them to spread their teams out and tell more smaller-scale stories rather than 1 extremely large 10-year long dragon arc.

As a primarily WvW/competitive player I'm pretty whelmed by this news as it essentially sounds like it boils down to "pay money more frequently for the same stuff that used to be free" but while this primarily sounds like story content that I could care less about it also makes zero mention of new PvP/WvW features and/or Elite Specs. Basically the only thing I got out of my EoD purchase was the E-specs and because of the lack of additional content have barely logged in for the past 12 months. If this ends up just having us pay more frequently for the same PvE content released in-between expansions (formerly known as Living World) then I'm not sure I see the benefit to us because as far as I'm aware the current LW content still requires the associated expansion to play anyways, making this paradigm shift even more odd. I'm guessing that it'll be something like: Currently - Pay $40 to get 2 years of expansion content dished out every 3-4 months (4-6 episodes) and another expansion after ~24, plus 3-4 expansion "features" and 9 new elite specs Post EoD - Pay $30-35 get 1 year (possibly less?) of expansion content in 2-3 patches (story only) and possibly 1-2 expansion "features" + ??? I'm not cheap (having bought the $100+ version of every expansion thus far) and Gw2 is one of the best deals in gaming but it's hard to view this as anything but trying to get more money for the same release cadence ala SwToR and it's "DLC expansions". If somehow these mini-expansions mean more content ends up in the game instead of in the cash shop then it'll be worth it I suppose but somehow I doubt that is their plan. Overall I guess I'll wait and see how this play out, if it's what I fear it is then I'm overdue for a long break and can always come back in a few years and pick up the expansions in a bundle or on sale and play through it then, since we apparently no longer miss out by not logging in which is nice, though this is likely because you're now paying for LW up front. *Bear in mind that unless ArenaNet has been hiring like mad behind the scenes or has massively improved their workflow, this is still the same studio with the same amount of people and they are in all likelihood going to put out the same amount of content over the same period of time but now it is going to cost more and thus have higher expectations because it's no longer just a patch or an update but an expansion, not sure about others but this just gives me "Icebrood Saga" vibes all over again.*

I kinda wish they would just remove thieves "elite" skills and just let us run an extra utility, because I would rather use blinding powder in that slot as it has a Lower CD, Blind, Stunbreak, instant cast, blast finisher, 3s stealth (instead of 2) and it applies stability which prevents you from getting locked down immediately, technically shadow meld only gives you a whopping 1s of extra stealth for a 10s increase in CD (2 stacks) which makes it arguably inferior to a base class utility. 🤷‍♂️

Well of Silence: This skill has been reworked. It now dazes enemies on the initial strike, then removes conditions from allies in the area on each pulse. Gain shadow force for each condition removed. Reduced cooldown from 50 seconds to 40 seconds in PvP and WvW. I guess Anet missed the memo on this one because thieves don't have the luxury of using our wells as actual utilities when playing support, and using a condi-cleanse on CD instead of situationally makes it near worthless, while nerfing it big time in PvP/WvW, going to throw this one in the closet with "Well of Blood" now.

People keep saying support specter builds are fine *IF...*, or they are good for *THIS specific case...*, or if you run *THAT niche comp...* but I think that's my problem with specter as a whole, it does absolutely nothing better than a competing build on another class and often is worse for the same role when compared to other supports in the majority of cases. For example, a support specter offers very little in terms of both utility and healing when compared to my support rev or guardian build (it can give some AoE barrier every ~10-15 seconds is about it) while providing significantly less boons and CC and requiring significantly more nuance and effort to play at a similar level in group content due to its single target nature, this gives me next to no reason to want to play it over virtually any other support build which can do everything specter can but in an area of 5 players instead of 1. What I mean is sure you can technically heal for as much as a herald rev but it requires you to stack wells/ports, use very specific traits (not uncommon for supports but specter has no real options for variety or utility), run sword/pistol (which isn't a healing set at all) and basically spam sword 2 for ports just to achieve marginally close to the same healing that heralds can get passively, and heralds can also upkeep 6-7 boons passively at the same time, both are annoying because you need to spam utilities but herald gets A LOT more than just Alacrity and unwanted mobility out of it. Most other supports (post druid buff) are around the same level these days giving you various options for the role but then Specter sits squarely in the "Why would I use this over X?" category for me and has been there since shortly after the post-launch nerfs. I'm not sure what exactly they could do to improve this outlook for me but I would start by looking at the mostly worthless shroud mechanic, currently you feel punished for staying in shroud for any more than 5 seconds due to it's very low healing/boon/damage output. My favorite idea is having shroud skills ALL focus on heavy AoE healing(or barrier)/damage cleave but for a more limited time (think holosmith forge instead of Necro shroud) and having the non-shroud scepter skills focus on single targeted-radius AoEs (you target an enemy/ally and the effect happens 100% on them and something like 50% on 4 targets in X radius around them, think Mind Sear from WoW) for example Shadow Sap could target an ally and heal them for the full amount but heal everyone in a 180 radius around them for 50% and apply the might to all affected, this would actually make it a really good filler heal/buffer instead of the worthless trash it is currently, it could work the same way for targeting enemies, except by applying AoE damage/condis which DPS specter desperately needs. Something like this would help Specter maintain it's identity towards single targets but make it much more usable as a support in both PvE and WvW by giving it some AoE capabilities. Unfortunately things like that are more in the "rework" category of changes but Anet seems to think tweaks to numbers is all specter needs which is... laughable imo.

The change is more of a nerf to the unblockable nature of Swipe, which was way better in PvP/WvW than having extra range.

I don't really have a favorite though I am partial to Rev, but Specter is by FAR the worst "dedicated support" spec in the game, you are better off taking any other support build in any situation than running specter. Even the Alac/DPS version of it is terrible because you drop 10k DPS just to be a well-spamming bot tasked with giving out a specific boon that doesn't really benefit you. If guardian Is(was?) a 9/10 then rev is a 7.5 and Specter is a 2/10.

Free action Originally removed Cripple, Chill and Immobilize, going back to the launch of PoF, this was removed in May 8, 2018. their spaghetti code is probably confusing the new version with the original version somehow.

Almost 5 hours later and we still can't get into EBG, not sure when Anet clocks out for the day but any longer and it's probably going to be stuck like this till the patch forces a reset tomorrow..

T1's EBG is definitely borked, can confirm. SoS seems banned from EBG right now with a queue of 90 and 0 players on the map 🤷‍♂️ pls fix asap.

https://ibb.co/jDffdgS I've seen 1-5 queue bugs in the past but it's gotten so bad almost no-one from the red side can join EBG anymore. The Queue is currently at 69 (nice) and rising people are reporting dropping 50+ places and then sitting at 12 in queue for 2+ hours, I managed to get in and I believe there was maybe 2 other people on the map. This doesn't seem like it's going to fix itself like the queue bug normally does either. Edit* actually as of posting the queue is up to 90 and still raising (SS was taken about an hour ago) still nobody can get in.

Oh boy SoS and HoD, 2 servers with virtually 0 NA population, time to find a new game to play for the next two months because my timezone is going to be completely dead ZzZz..

Well.. we can RP walk now when kneeling so.. yay? This really isn't going to help unless swiftness/SS affects that speed, because you still aren't going to be able to reposition effectively without burning a dodge or un-kneeling while RP walking. Also the 300 range reduction and pointless initiative increase says a lot about how they view DE's "power budget".

I'm pretty sure the point is to remove these boons from those game-modes (PvP & WvW) entirely without actually modifying the skill in PvE (AkA being lazy) in much the same way that they previously used 300s CDs to effectively remove passive traits from the game.

TBH at this point I think vindicator (at least support) was better off with the single dodge, given the sheer amount of nerfs this has needed ever since the change, they clearly never really thought this through all the way and are currently playing it by ear so to speak. Also not really sure what the point in increasing the energy cost AND the CD on Tree song, this only really hurts its ability to cleanse (which other professions can do much better already), it was never really any good for getting a ton of endurance back.

I expect they won't even do one, despite how much it may be needed. But honestly if they did do a rework of acro I'd imagine they would have the same guy work on it that did the rework of the 300s traits in the last patch, in other words they have someone who has no clue about the class rework bad traits into new equally bad traits and call it a day, nothing lost, nothing gained but Anet can wash their hands and say they did something. Yes 10 years of this kind of 'balance' has left me jaded.

The fact that they said that implies to me that they knew that it was too small to actually be worth using which honestly makes changes like this even worse because it means they actively spent developer time making more traits they knew wouldn't ever be taken which really just wastes everyone's time. You're already in there poking around in the code, why not take 5 more minutes and think of a way to actually make a good trait instead of some barely passable garbage just to check a box and say "Yep, we did something with all those 300s CD, didn't say it would be improving them though."

This is caused by the trait "Reaver's Curse" Which gives 5 Endurance per target hit with your dodge, since the heal dodge only affects allies, you get 25 endurance back when hitting 4 other allies, which when combined with vigor/endurance food means that in-effect you can chain dodges nearly infinitely as long as you're in a zerg.

The DPS dodge was reduced from 4.0 to somewhere around a 2.0 power coefficient so it does roughly half to 30% less damage and the buff was taken from 15s to 10s. The Boon dodge had it's boon duration reduced from 2 to 1 seconds. The Heal dodge was seemingly hit the hardest, while the buff is still 6 seconds, the actual healing/barrier was reduced by what feels like 75%. For me personally it healed anywhere from 4.5k-6k pre-patch, now it's doing 1.6k which is more than a 50% reduction. *heal dodge numbers are in a full healing build/gear. *edit None of that matters though because if you run Reaver's Curse you can infinitely spam dodges with vigor and become unkillable.

5 Endurance per shadowstep from Hard to Catch is the biggest joke i've seen in a while from the balance team and that's saying something 😂 I genuinely think more people would run this in its old 300s CD form than now, Anet must really buy into the whole "thieves have infinite spammable shadowsteps" nonsense that people have been spouting since launch.