Noko Anon.9154

This is actually a really good idea, and I wish I had thought of that suggestion. What about for Daring Dragon? Could it be given something like Fury and Quickness so, even though its damage ceiling is lower, it can still do considerable damage rather quickly? Or is it just fine as-is, in your opinion?

After having played the profession some more, I have an unpopular opinion. I believe Unyielding Dragon needs to have the might gain removed. The only reason I feel this way is that its rapid might gain, in conjunction with the Strength trait Might Makes Right, renders the option of Immortal Dragon completely obsolete. This is especially noticeable when running Tactics as a trait line as well, to improve shout skills. But, can bladesworn survive as an elite specialization option for warrior if this powerful synergy were taken away...? The only alternatives I see is making Dragon Triggers stronger, so the health gained from Immortal Dragon is greater than the health gained from multiple individual stacks of might, or else changing Unyielding Dragon to give a single stack of X might after a Dragon Trigger is used.

I love most of the feel of bladesworn. I enjoy the idea of Dragon Triggers. I like having a profession that takes advantage of ammunition skills, which I feel is a mechanic that can be expanded upon not just for bladesworn, but perhaps for other classes that use ammunition skills. I'm having a tremendous amount of fun combining shouts (which are ammo) with Lush Forest and DT-Boost (during pushes) or Reach (frontlining ranged) to trigger Soldier's Comfort to play a support spec in both PvP and WvW. However, that's almost all that I can do. As others have said, the damage coefficients on Dragon Triggers in competitive environments are way too low. Force in PvE has a coefficient of 20.4 at max; in PvP and WvW, it's gutted to 1.295 at full charge, lower that a level 1 Eviscerate (1.333) or Kill Shot (1.4). Getting to full charge also takes more than 3 seconds, more than the stability offered by Dragon Defense, and one stack of stability that doesn't last the whole flow charge, that also happens only once every 60 seconds (in PvP, it's 8 seconds in PvE and feels great against veteran hydras). The inability to deal damage on burst, the inability to stay grounded to deal any damage with burst, and its elite mechanics being undertuned or just plain bad, make it difficult for me to try and suggest someone play a sidenoding bladesworn over a spellbreaker. Others have also rightly put out the issue of being forced into gunsword after a dragon trigger, which is why I can only say that I love most of the feel of the elite, and not all of it. As others have also pointed out, engineers take advantage of weapon kits and still get procs on swap sigils. If gunblade is going to have such long cooldowns, then it needs to be treated like an engineering kit; if it's going to be treated like a standard weapon set, then it needs shorter cooldowns. It shouldn't have the worst of both worlds. I like the feel. I like the movement. I like the traits not being as ostensibly boring as other profession elites this expansion that are so obviously "power", "condi", or "support" options. Compare Unshakeable Mountain with Fierce as Fire: Both want you to burn through your ammo skills, but the former wants you to burn your skills in terms of attrition against an elite mob or another player, while the latter wants you to hit as hard as fast as possible. That's fantastic! That's what more trait lines should be, changing the way players play the profession beyond milquetoast "deal extra condi damage while wielding X". I say all this to say that the elite's framework is there. It is so close to being an elite warriors want to use. You've done great work designing it, and we all look forward to your fine-tuning of it.

I've solved my problem, at least for me. I've added "-assetsrv 64.25.41.2" (without quotations) to my GW2 shortcut, and now the game is properly loading instance maps. Good luck to you all facing various difficulties with this error code.

I've been given a suggestion that the coaxial cable(s) used for internet or router could be the problem, either being old, bad, or loose. It's going to take me some time to see if this is the issue, but if it's within your power to check that connection or, potentially, get them replaced for free, I would encourage that in the meantime.

After submitting a ticket, the help team responded that I'm suffering from packet loss, but their explanation for what I should be seeing in-game was completely unrelated to the issue that I'm having. I was suggested to contact my ISP, but on their end, I'm having some of the best internet on the market. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the help team isn't sure what's causing this, and is in the dark just as much as we are. It could very well just be that the Amazon servers that we're going through to get to the game have done a change that's affecting a very small minority of players, which I suppose can be considered an "acceptable loss".

Can't get in to Cantha because this specific disconnect prevents me from entering story instances, dungeons, and PvP maps. I can create a new character and complete their prologue story. I can also eventually enter a PvP map, since the client first tries to bring me into the Heart of the Mists, and then puts me into the PvP map. I cannot enter story instances or dungeons no matter how many times I try, because the game loads me directly into the overworld instead. I am unable to experience the expansion that I've purchased, and there are no known solutions to the problem. Edit: Was able to enter the Old Friends instance for EoD after guesting on my link server, but trying to enter the following instance not only booted me from the game, but also prevents me from logging in to the game world entirely.

While I disagree with the developers' decisions with this balance patch, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here. It could very well be that the team in charge of balancing weapons, skills, and traits have been working so hard on the EoD elites that they're using a recording system to go over which weapons, skills, and traits are the most-often used in >1500 level play, and simply don't have the time to go over why they were most used. Fortunately, most people here have been able to articulate that Shadow Arts, Deceptions, and D/P are taken not because they're broken, but because thief has no other answers to good PvP professions because its other weapon sets, skills, and trait lines are so awfully weak. (It should be noted that D/D and staff are extremely viable in PvE content, so those weapon sets themselves are just fine. A focus on why S/D and P/D work for roaming in WvW and not in PvP should be the goal instead of balancing every weapon set since, again, not everything should be viable, but more than one option should.) Let's be optimistic that the team does read our comments 🙂

You're limiting your perspective. Balancing is more than nerfing one profession to be comparable to others, it's also about boosting a profession's mechanics against its other capabilities. Take a look at engineer, for example: What is it about Alchemy and Holosmith that makes those trait lines so important in PvP? It's because Firearms and Scrapper (outside of the current meme build) and Tools are so comparatively worthless. Alchemy and Holosmith are too strong in their current form in comparison to Firearms, Tools, and Scrappers. The solution, if this ever becomes a problem to the developers, isn't to nerf Alchemy and Holosmith, but to do something about the other three trait lines to make them viable options in PvP. In fact, with so much dislike for stealth in this thread, I would find it hard for most on here to argue with me that Tools shouldn't get a buff when it sports a trait to reduce the cooldown on toolbelt skills and also gadgets, with one gadget in particular, Utility Goggles, a stun break that cancels blindness offered up by a hypothetical Shadow Shot or Black Powder or Smoke Screen, offering a toolbelt skill called Detection Pulse, which offers 6 seconds of reveal in an area, as well as a trait called Lock On which also causes 6 seconds of reveal. Yet I don't hear any complaints about not buffing Tools to be something an engineer can use, when this could make engineer oh so valuable in protecting against backstabbing thieves going after a support class that has less than 50% health. Also, consider a decently-balanced profession in PvP, the revenant. While both top-ranking builds for it use Legendary Assassin stance (which makes sense, given it's the most mobile and bursty of its stances) and both use Invocation (which also makes sense, given how important switching stances is as a core profession mechanic), they both differ wildly despite both being power-based builds. One makes use of Devastation and Herald for its burst damage and damage mitigation, while the other instead can use Retribution and Renegade to help it survive and deliver a tremendous amount of damage all at once. Revenants have a reason to choose whether to take this trait line or that one, because they are balanced within themselves. The game is more "open" to revenants compared to engineers who, if they don't take Alchemy and Holosmith, are handicapping themselves at higher levels of play. We're not asking for everything to be viable, but we're asking for more than one single option to be viable for our professions.

Hi there! I hope you can understand why the player base is reacting the way it is, because egregious changes that have been made in the past haven't been properly rectified, the promise last year of consistent balancing hasn't panned out (though with the pandemic this one can't be held against the team), and the solutions being provided here aren't taking care of the "disease", but instead affecting the symptoms. I would like to explain this by addressing thief. Shadow Arts on thief is used because of the stealth access, yes, but also because Meld with Shadows used in conjunction with the swiftness granted by Unhindered Combat in the Daredevil line gives thieves unparalleled movement, which is what they lost when Infiltrator's Arrow had its initiative cost raised. It's not that Shadow Arts is so strong, but that other possibilities with thief are so weak. Deadeye has nearly no mobility, which is a design of the specialization. Core thief, meanwhile, can only readily have decent--not good, decent--mobility by going down Acrobatics to get Expeditious Dodger. Note, however, that Expeditious Dodger only grants 6 3/4 seconds of swiftness, compared to the 11 1/4 seconds granted by Unhindered Combatant, -and- that Daredevil has three dodges as part of its specialization, while core thief only has two. In other words, Daredevil readily has over twice the duration of swiftness that core thief has available to it by trait lines alone. Daredevil also has much more tremendous evasion options available (Unhindered Combat doing a better job than Don't Stop and Expeditious Dodger -combined), better endurance management (Endurance Thief doing in one button press what Endless Stamina and Feline Grace and/or Vigorous Recovery would have to do over time), better condition removal (Escapist's Fortitude not being limited to one's current health like Guarded Initiation, which is almost ineffective when being chased by a longbow ranger for example), and better enemy control (Weakening Strikes causing Weakness). Why go down Acrobatics when Daredevil does everything it does, but better? For Swindler's Equilibrium, when it's so much more effective to spike a player at less than 50% health with a dagger backstab out of stealth from Shadow Arts than to fight with a sword that has been so heavily nerfed out of the fear of a stunlock or an easily-telegraphed Flank Strike? Or Upper Hand, which gives 1 initiative every 5 seconds? Acrobatics offers players next to nothing, and even core players are moving towards Pistol/Dagger condition thieves to deal damage because at least Shadow Strike and Bola Shot (with it's 1 1/2 second Immobilize with Vulnerability) offer mobility that a sword simply cannot provide, not even with Infiltrator's Strike (a 1 second Immobilize with Swiftness for 1 less initiative). That speaks for the profession in terms of mobility, but what about utility skills? Well, Deception skills have a heal that removes some of the most dangerous conditions (burning and poison), stealth on stability, and a shadowstep. These are good skills, but the only reason they're so strong is that other options are so incredibly weak. I'm not going to speak about Venoms or Signets here, but rather Tricks. If one takes Hidden Thief, a person gains stealth on steal (quick stealth attacks to trigger Rending Shade, which steals 1 boon on top of the commonly selected trait Bountiful Theft's 2 boons), and a Hide in Shadows that is on a 1 second shorter cooldown than Withdraw while also curing dangerous conditions and granting stealth for better repositioning, a blinding stealth with stability for either avoiding a pull or push or finishing downed professions like warrior or guardian that can interrupt a finishing move and that also functions as a blast finisher, and a teleport that can easily access second levels on maps that have more than one floor to them. The trade-off for Hidden Thief is Shadow's Embrace (usually not taken in PvP matches because perma-stealth isn't something heavily relied upon) or Merciful Ambush (which I will not discuss because you've already said your team is discussing it). In other words, the gains from Hidden Thief greatly outweigh the costs of not taking the other traits. Let's take a look at Trickster, and Tricks. Withdraw doesn't provide stealth, but it does provide a short evade frame and removes non-damaging conditions and torment, though torment received a nerf in its mechanics so certain torment-focused professions could have condition builds in PvE content. Roll for Initiative is also a great tool, offering players spacing and a huge initiative gain. And then there's Haste, which does increase overall damage, and is a stunbreak, but it doesn't offer nearly the defensive capabilities that Blinding Powder does, and when both are traited, Blinding Powder has a 4 second shorter cooldown. More than that, Trickster allows tricks to remove 1 single condition. What's the cost of that? Bountiful Theft, which can steal aegis or resolution, and also provides the thief and nearby allies vigor for more dodging. Where can a thief get vigor access from then, besides Bountiful Theft? Well, Deadeye offers some options, but again, we aren't looking at Deadeye in PvP due to their intentional mobility issues. The only trait line that offers vigor access for thieves besides this one great trait is Acrobatics, which we've already gone over as to why it's a poor trait line. One condition removed is not worth losing the boonstripping and vigor that a thief wants to avoid attacks in PvP. Tricks aren't bad because Deception skills are so strong, it's that Deceptions are so strong because Tricks are so bad. The point is, some things do need to be nerfed. However, these thief changes aren't it. I don't expect miracles, and I don't expect everything to be reworked when you have a massive expansion coming out. That's ridiculous entitlement. However, when you all do have the ability to allocate resources towards balancing the game, please focus less on hurting what is considered good right now, and focus instead on helping what is considered useless and/or redundant. Acrobatics is useless and redundant. Core engineer is useless. Soulbeast is redundant. Then, when we've gotten to a point where things start evening out, then we can focus on real problem children in the game, like the "trade-off" for Firebrand from core is gaining 15(!) skills instead of having just 3 from their Virtues. All one step at a time, of course.