HeliosMagi.9867

It seems every thread in this forums is full of people complaining about the new Rune and Relic system and how it's power creep and vertical progression and how it takes away value from Legendary Runes. But for some reason the people that are actually excited about the new system like myself have by curiously quiet. I for one am actually excited for the new possibilities the new Relic system brings, there are a ton of runes with really cool or powerful Lv6 effects that see little to no use in meta builds because they're attached to rune with mediocre stats. For example I love using Runes of Speed on my open-world Daredevil, but at the same time using them costs me a ton of damage compared to using Scholar runes. With the new system I'll be able to have the stats of Scholar runes with the boosted Swiftness of Speed runes. TL;DR Please stop being so toxic about your current builds getting a little weaker and start being excited about the new, better builds you'll be getting.

If you don't like grinding why are you playing an MMO? And besides, I'm looking forward to all the new, better builds I'll be able to make with the new relic system.

I'm hoping for more stats sets with Concentration as the major stat, right now the only one we have is Diviner's for Power DPS, I'd like condi and healing builds to get a version of that.

This would make would make maintaining boons on the party so much easier, especially in fights with a lot of spread out mechanics, and we wouldn't have to crowd into such a small pile, ranged DPS could actually fight at range, and not having the whole party concentrated in one spot overlapping a million abilities would make mechanics so much easier to see.

I'm pretty sure Vindicator dodges work like this, no excuse DD can't do the same.

Just made my first Aurene Legendary weapon, and there's something about the variants I'm not clear on. For say the Primordus variant, I have to buy 4 scale splinters, combine them to unlock a collection, then complete the collection to unlock the ability to buy an Uncharged Fragment of Prismatic Fire, which I have to charge by clearing Dragonstorm, then use the now Charged Fragment to unlock the Primordus skin for my weapon. What I want to know is if I make a different Aurene weapon afterwards and want the Primordus skin for that one too, do I have to do that entire chain all over again, or will it let me skip to buying the Uncharged Fragment since I already unlocked the ability to purchase it from the first time?

With the addition of weeklies, mist-hardened lockboxes, and all the tradable stuff that Dugan offers, is the rewards from playing WvW competitive with other gamemodes now?

Longbow is used in Condi Berserker builds in PvE and is part of a meta Zerg build in WvW. Rifle Berserker was good in PvP a while back, but I don't think anyone's running it anymore.

Another thread here theorized that the Wizard's Tower could be something equivalent to FFXIV's Deep Dungeons, and it got me thinking that one of the things that GW2 lacks compared to other MMOs like FFXIV and Runescape is satisfying endgame solo content. FFXIV has Deep Dungeons, randomly generated 200-flour rouglelike dungeons that can be done with anywhere between 1 and 4 players, and rewards an exclusive title for those that manage to clear the final floor solo, as well as the Masked Carnivale, a series of exclusively solo instanced encounters centered around the Blue Mage class, ranging from more puzzle-like encounters to bosses that are as mechanically complex a those found in raids. And on Runescape's side, nearly the entire game is designed with solo play in mind, and takes it further with special Ironman modes that cut off access to things like the bank and trading post to force the player to be completely self-reliant. GW2 doesn't have anything like that. Everything that isn't the story, whether it be open-world metas, instanced PvE, or competitive modes, is designed to be done in groups. And sometimes I want a challenge where clearing it means for certain it was because of my own skill, not because players better than me carried me through it. Also because I find buildcraft for solo play far more interesting than for group content.

An equivalent to Deep Dungeons would be fantastic. Especially if they're designed to be possible to solo like they are in FFXIV, I've been craving challenging solo endgame content for a long time now.

Not every elite spec needs to change how a profession fundamentally plays. In fact each profession having 1 elite spec that's just "core but better" is a good thing, since it provides a way for new players that just hit Lv80 to ease into endgame builds before trying out more complex specs. For Thief Daredevil is the "Core+" spec that acts as a gateway into more complex specs, like what Berserker is to Warrior.

For instanced PvE, the Be Quick or Be Killed version of Dual Dagger Deadeye is very easy to play. It does 37k with just 3 buttons, and can go over 40k with 5 buttons.

Just jack up the power of the last few hits, make it stronger than Axe 5 at the cost of rooting you in place. High risk, high reward. Maybe make it inflict vulnerability with each strike to really motivate you to find opportunities to fit the whole cast in.

They should add a mechanic where using a burst while HtS is on cooldown would cause the next HtS to trigger automatically. That would solve the issue with unsyned cooldowns without making Decapitate overpowered with it.

Instead of infusions you have to slot into armor. One thing I really don't like about the system is it makes doing fractals with more than one character or build extremely inconvenient and expensive. Unlike Raids and Strikes, where I can quickly and cheaply grabs some exotics off the TP and be good to go, T4 Fractals require roughly 80g worth of Agony Infusions plus the ascended gear needed to slot them in. This greatly limits how many characters and builds I can bring into fractals, and it can end up screwing me over if one of the few Fractal-ready builds I have does poorly in a given fractal. Both Sunqua Peak and the new Silent Surf have end bosses that favor ranged condi damage, but both my characters with full Agony Resistance are melee power builds, so I'm locked into using a sub-optimal build and making the fights take longer. It's gotten to a point where I just skip daily fractals when Sunqua and likely Silent Surf too show up as dailies.

On single targets only thing Staff has over Daggers on Deadeye is stronger autos. On the BQoBK build with all boons and conditions, using Deadeye's Mark on cooldown but otherwise only using autos Staff averages 30k while Daggers do 27k. So if you need an even lower-intensity build than the regular build Staff's for you. Or you could swap to it if a mechanic puts Reveal on you, like if you get fixated by Samarog. So again it seems Staff works best as a supplement to D/D Deadeye rather than a replacement, use Daggers for high single-target DPS and swap to Staff if you need cleave or got revealed.

While Staff won't be replacing Daggers on Deadeye anytime soon, I can see taking it on my weapon swap for encounters where cleave would be better than the CC of an offhand pistol. Thief notoriously has terrible cleave outside of Staff, so leaning into that angle would probably be best. What I would do is change Malicious Hook Strike to hit 5 targets around the user, and do double damage against the Marked Target. Maybe change the name to Malicious Hook Sweep, to make more thematic sense.

Sigil of Concentration will get us the rest of the way.

Please revert Arc Divider back to it's pre-patch version. Also Heat The Soul needs some adjustment, as is any weapon other than Axe has problems maintaining Quickness due to the cooldowns getting out of sync. A solution like what I posted in the Warrior forums would be best, but failing that reducing the cooldown to 3.5s would be a step in the right direct. Also adding Might to the PvE version would be really nice too.

So far I tested Axe/Pistol and Dagger/Axe Berserker, Dagger/Pistol Spellbreaker, and Staff Deadeye. In all cases they all performed worse than their standard builds. Has anyone else that's done more testing than me discovered a hidden gem that weaponmaster enables, or is using an espec weapon outside its espec always suboptimal?

You get access to all your elite specs' weapons without needing to have the elite spec equipped. For warrior that means you can equip torch, daggers, or offhand pistol without being a Berserker, Spellbreaker, or Bladesworn respectively.

Some actual feedback, the Dagger Primal Burst is not recharged when using Blood Reckoning, I'm assuming this is an oversight.

A lot of other professions have a ton to complain about from this patch (RIP Mukluk's Druid and my Berserker's Arc Divider) but Thief seems to have managed to dodge any major upheavals. Power Daredevil got its Staff skills buffed, we don't need to backstab to deal full damage to bosses anymore, Deadeye got a Quickness build that's really easy to use, applying Alacrity as a Spectre is a lot less annoying now, and Heal Spectre might actually be viable now (All-Thief Meme Party might actually be good now!?) Mind you this is coming from a PvE main that only dabbles in competitive modes, and I don't play every possible build of a given class, but from what I experienced Thief mains should be unironically happy this patch.

The new Heat The Soul's problem is the cooldown of the trait and the cooldown of your bursts can very easily get out of sync with each other, so you have situations where HTS is ready but you can't use it because your burst is still on cooldown. So you either delay your bursts and lose a ton of damage, or spam them and lose quickness uptime. The most obvious solution is to remove HTS's cooldown, but that introduces a new problem where Axe can maintain Quickness without any investment into boon duration while losing very little DPS, which is likely the reason HTS has a cooldown to begin with. I propose adding an additional effect to Heat The Soul; for now let's call it Kindle The Soul. Whenever you trigger Heat The Soul, in addition to boons you also gain Kindle The Soul. Using a Burst skill while you have Kindle The Soul will cause the next Heat The Soul to be automatically triggered. This solves the problem of Bursts and Heat The Soul falling out of sync without making Axe overpowered. Also please add Might to HTS in PvE, it would really help my solo build.

You might not even need One in the Chamber, Mercy+Improv is 4 Steal Times on its own, should be enough to maintain Quickness all on its own. A quick-&-dirty rotation I came up with was netting me 32k with a nice comfy Quickness buffer (over 15 seconds left when the golem died.)