PseudoNewb.5468

Just ignore inner Nayos, it is unnecessary altogether, since you killed Cerus and pushed back the invasion of Amnytas. That is the end of the Kryptis threat. Just replace Inner Nayos with a footnote. "Without Cerus, and the loss of the army he lead in Amnytas, Eparch, was soon discovered to be a paper tiger that was easily dispatched". I can't say the same about Janthir, they kind of decided to split the story up and just leave it hanging to complete in the future releases. If the future releases suck, you can't really separate the current story from it. So, yeah, we will have to wait for an actual conclusion to see how it lands.

This behavior has reverted to the necro sword release behavior as of the 7/16 patch. With no patch notes for this, who knows if this is intentional.

I have always noticed a quirk, since release, of the jade bot protocols apply boon, not only when entering combat, but also upon leaving combat. I believe this is a bug, because the description of the protocols state that is applies boons upon entering combat. Exiting combat does not appear to be included in that description. This likely caused a doubling of the intended application of boons prior to a cooldown being added to the application of boons in situations where entering and existing combat rapidly. The addition of a cooldown, while preventing this unintended double application creates a situation where the cooldown may be trigger upon leaving combat. Which is not very nice. It will give you boons when they are not necessary, and put the boon application on cooldown. For example if you start combat (and trigger the protocols boons), then end combat 35 second later, you will trigger the protocol when leaving combat. If you then enter combat again 25 second after leaving the first combat, you will not receive boons upon entering combat a second time, even though you entered the first combat 60 seconds ago. I know that the boons aren't supposed to be something that maintains full combat uptime, but the extra, mostly useless application upon leaving combat feels bad and I think should be fixed.

The reticle for action camera, does not appear to render correctly depending on actions performed by the player after turning on action camera. Using the default reticule, it is normally fully opaque when activated, and the player is in their normal untransformed state. Also in this state, when targeting and locking a valid attackable target the action camera will have additional indicators depending on targeting status. If action camera is activated when mounted on a regular mount like the raptor. The reticule is semi-transparent. And there are not additions to the reticule when targeting and locking a valid attackable target. So it seems there are two intended states for the action camera reticule. One where it is fully opaque and has additions indicators when pointing at an attackable target, and a second state where it is semi-transparent and does not ever receive additional indicators. There appears to be a problem with how the reticule transitions between these states while action camera is left on. For example when a player activates action camera, it starts in this second (inactive) state. When the player dismounts the reticule starts showing additional target indicators and becomes more active, however, it remains semi-transparent. This is not good because the semi transparent reticule is much harder to see, and looks different. When dismounting, the reticule should both add the additional target indicators, and become fully opaque to match the reticule behavior if action cam had been activated off the mount. Conversely if action camera is activate while un-mounted, and the player mounts, the targeting and additional indicators are removed, however the reticule remains fully opaque instead of matching the semi-transparent reticule that occurs when activating action camera while already mounted. Since starting combat while mounted and then dismounting through the engage skill is very common, I mostly have a problem with the action camera remaining semi-transparent, even though I have entered full, standard skillset combat. Please look into this to ensure that the reticule opacity remains consistent with its state. Or easier, it would be nice just to force the reticule to always be fully opaque, as the semi-transparent reticule just makes it hard to see, especially when in combat.

Female Charr swim bottom looks messed up. It seems to be a modified male one with a flattened... package. However the texture on it has shading on it to suggest/emphasize the package that doesn't exist. Even if the top swimwear is the same as the male one because of their body, the bottom shouldn't be using that texture because it looks really odd.

I think this is intentional. It is, after all a combat launch ability on the skyscale. Most of the time I use this simply if when the game doesn't want to let me out of combat, but you should realize, that being a combat launch, it can be used to get you out of a bad situation in a pinch. It is instant cast (can be used while knocked down and not susceptible to interrupts) and allows you to get on your mount, which is immune to cc effects, and covers your hp bar with it's own. In that way, if you get slammed into the ground in the open world you can use it to prevent downstate, or otherwise alleviate heavy CC or damaging conditions. What I have also noticed that when using this launch, your character seems to recover health, like it is out of combat, even if the skyscale launch doesn't move you away enough from the battle to actually put you out of combat. This might be intentional too but I don't know. In other words, the combat launch is a way to help players who realized they are in a terrible spot, and need to reposition, or flee. In the eparch fight for example, you can use it to reposition to a cleansing well, and then to a buff mote, so that you can ensure you are fully buffed. Walking around the area is much slower and the skyscale can greatly reduce any downtime from repositioning. This is very useful for people trying to manage the portals, so that they can re-buff and return in a pinch when there is time pressure with portals constantly opening. It can also be used to prevent downstate if some of the mechanics converge on top of you. Downstate is a big loss of player effectiveness, and can also cause a massive amount of downtime in cases of defeat and needing to run back. The skyscale combat launch, in addition to the jade bot revive, are tools to help players get out of bad situations. They have a cooldown so they aren't always available, but give the player a few chances to avoid running back.

GW3 could take inspiration from Monster Hunter instead. I think there is a way to translate that to a more casual MMO setting. Monster Hunter can be challenging, but it is not as soul crushing as souls games. But you have similar aspects of taking on large enemies with big attacks that can slap you down the street.

Perhaps a lot of the boon balancing / and stripping issues is because boons are quite decisive with how they affect the outcome of battle. Boons give a massive advantage if there is lopsided boon application, and strips can be decisive if both sides brings boons, but one side gets the right boon stripped. Basically one button can turn an even battle to I win if timed right with boon application or strip. Boons being powerful means strips are also powerful and both boon providing and stripping become extremely sensitive to balancing issues. So Anet is seemingly trying to remove them from both ends of the formula. But they are doing it in a piecemeal way which is causing all sorts of problems. Like with removing a bunch of sources of alacrity, but having to chase down the next class that provides a bunch of it. Or chasing down sources of boon strip. With concentration, you have to hit boon sources and duration hard. But people will just take more and more concentration if they need more uptime. It really just makes support role more and more specialized rather than reducing the amount of boons. So... instead of targeting their sources and duration, wouldn't it be easier to simply make boons less effective overall. Make them less decisive in PvP in WvW? So instead of taking PvE alac builds/traits and making them something completely different in WvW and PvP so that alac can be balanced, why not just broadly reduce the effectiveness of alacrity? Say change alacrity to reduce recharge by 11% instead of 25%. It still means one player with alacrity will get a second round of skills faster than players without, but it still leaves room for execution differences to level it out. It also means that having alacrity, or stripping it won't be the sole reason why a fight is won or loss. Do the same for quickness protection and resolution, and boons and strips will simply be less important vs other factors. It is kind of the same idea with stability. It was strong and negated so much of the combat, so it had to be re-designed to balance it. Just tone down the boons effect and naturally the game can be less focused on how much is too much boon application or too much boon strip. Still important but not such a dominating factor.

Actually, the Guild hall update in the same patch, changed something you expect to be called once based on game mode, into something that can be applied to each player independently of game mode. The entire skill balance configuration has now become dynamic and updatable on a per player basis. I imagine that the triggering and duration of the downstate invulnerability is closely related to skill and game mode balance, so the fact that the potentially broke a bunch of game mode balance assumptions to get the guild hall working, makes you wonder how much the code got chewed up to implement. If the only side effect was a single oversight on downstate invulnerability duration, then I'd say that was a job well done. Although I don't know what the value of being able to set different balance modes on individual players are. We only see that in guild halls for now I guess. With how coding is often done, if you assume something doesn't change, you will code it knowing that it doesn't change. To convert it into something that DOES change, you probably have to re-work a lot of it. So adding individual game mode balance to players in a guild hall, seems like a low impact, but high risk change. I hope it is can at least be appreciated, on an academic level, that this update contains a potentially large reorganization of 'bad' back-end code, even if it's impact on your play is very low. Perhaps the true value of this code update is in streamlining the iteration of balance decision for the balance team. The guild hall updates was just a nice addition that some people can enjoy. I do wonder now, with it fixed and all. Does the way your downstate work, reflect your game mode you set on yourself in the guild hall?

It says 'fun' but, that makes it seem like it might not be that impactful... So here is my idea of what a 'fun' thing can be (in the form of a patch note). New equipment slot for support items Supports items provide the effect of summoning an ally for one minute every minute while in combat. Support items do not function in WvW, PvP, Strike CMs, or Raids. There will not be a legendary support item. Fire Elemental Powder, Jade Armor, Pocket Jade Armor, Sunspear Paragon Support, Raven Spirit Shadow consumable items are now support items. Ogre Pet Whistle is now a vendor item and currency to purchase new support items that summons various ogre pets. Prices for the consumables have been adjusted to reflect their new status as equipment. Double click any consumables you currently own to convert them into the equivalent items, as equipment they will not stack. All current players can also claim a free support item from the following list by visiting <Legacy rune support supplier> in Lions Arch. Lich minion support Pirate parrot support Ogre rock dock support Asura golem support To address server load, while a support item is equipped and while in combat, your mini pet is disabled. Allies summoned by support items have had their health and damage re-balanced.

If the servers can handle the load, I think that each finisher should be able to proc effects for one of each unique type of field that the finisher passes through. Maybe only allow the field to generate 5 of each different finisher effects during it's lifetime too. This makes it much easier to coordinate and prevent the issues of combo fields fighting each other. If they where any more useful without this quality of life, then people will just complain about different fields nullifying or taking finisher effects from each other. The moment someone has to think, can I put down my field, or will it overwrite someone else's field, is the moment fields become useless in a group situation. Even without buffing the effects, this alone could create a substantial amount of power creep, especially for condition builds, if you can stack all the fields and finishers that apply damaging conditions. But this game has gone through phases of power creep, and it could survive finishers applying the effects from multiple fields. The fact that overlapping fields negatively affect each other just makes them bad to use. Just like how conditions stacks used to cancel each other due to stack limits.

People sleep on the fact that Both turtle slam and cannons do defiance damage. Turtle cannons can be spammed (there is NO cast time) + refilled with bond of endurance. You can drop 5 shells in like 1/4 a second and if you use bond of endurance the next 5 shells come out in around 3 more seconds. 10 shells in 4 seconds can be a huge opener against anything assuming you fill the turtle cannons before the attack window opens. The gunner can leave and empty turtle, and do regular damage rotation, or find another fully loaded turtle, then go back when the turtle is refilled. There is no combat restrictions for hopping onto the gunner seat. Anet, can you make it so that the interact to board turtle have different and increasing priorities relative to how many available shells are on each turtle? When there is a stack of turtles I have to wiggle around so much to try to find a fresh turtle and avoid reentering a turtle I just emptied.

I can't do #12 either. Edit: After daily reset, I did this as the first thing, other than clicking the login reward. It worked then. I hypothesize that the bush is incorrectly hooked up to some other daily limited task in Seitung. In fact opening the chest 12 disable the two other bushes, while the middle bush still does the incorrect selection animation and noise on interact. Maybe I can do stuff and see what breaks the bush. 2nd Update: It seems like doing chest #25 or #36 causes the middle bush to become disabled. But.. now I have to wait for another reset to narrow it down. 3rd Update: Ok after re-testing with the daily reset I have found out that the middle bush is disable after doing the chest 13. Hint: Hides on a balcony at the monastery. Which is odd because I was pretty sure I completed that chest after I tried #12 for the first time. maybe multiple different triggers disable the middle bush somehow.

I don't think the champs in this mini dungeon recover health, so I think any build can do this, if they are ok with respawning a few times.

I am pretty sure, last year (or maybe the year before that) the ace racer achievement double counted your race if you simultaneously ran the standard event race with the time trial also active. But that is fixed now. It only counts once, but you can still get the daily time trial chests and the event reward together in a single lap by activating both together. After the first lap of the day, the time trial will not give you anything else, but you can still start it every lap if you are also going for a personal best or world record time or something. Note that specifically for the Dragon Bash beetle race, trying to run the time trial at the same time as the event race, actually prevents your first lap from counting for the event race, so running the time trail simultaneously does not work for that race.