LadyKitty.6120

This change is kind of a nightmare for people with full bank tabs full of stuff. When it comes to material storage however, if you know there's some stuffs you know you're going to MF soon, you can just take them from storage and put them into the bank. It obviously takes some bank space to do so but better than nothing in that regard (esp. if as absent-minded as Kitty).

In GW2, most skills with cast time don't have any waiting but the cast time is actually the animation duration for most skills, excluding ones with aftercast (that can usually be cancelled by using other skill or stowing). Combat speed just isn't super-arcade fast (for most classes, though some classes have really fast rotations) like might be a case with some other games. Asking for instant casts in this context would be essentially asking for lightspeed skill spamming without any animations which would be ridiculous. And it's not like other games don't have skills without animations actually taking a bit, right? And tbh, it's actually happened before with Deadeye's Shadow Flare bug that allowed them to do ridiculously broken DPS to the point of making any CMs at the time 15s fights and many in the raid community at the time used that bug to get their VitVs through that bug. That alone gives enough of a reason to have actual animation/cast times on skills. Also, GW2 doesn't root you for the cast time like many classic MMOs do (back in 2012 essentially every MMO rooted) which is why coming to GW2 actually required learning how to move while playing piano rotations which complicates the gameplay.

Capped 6 camps and a bunch of sentries and still no progress on the achievement on NA's Thornwatch.

It would be even better if there was also an apronless version of the maid outfit as the shirt and skirt are otherwise really close to a certain fashion style. Kitty's currently kinda circumventing it by using just Shadow Abyss on all channels which mostly hides the apron to be only visible from front but having totally apronless version would allow changing colors of top, skirt and shoes more freely.

Oh dear, is this like 102th thread on this exact same topic? So, for starters, DPS meters have done LOTS of good when it comes to variety of builds allowed. Back in 2017 when Kitty started raiding, she got bored of metabuilds quickly (as she does with any build after a few days) and back then it was insta-kick for wrong spec if commander didn't have arcdps. Meanwhile Kitty could say to commanders with arcdps that she'll voluntarily leave if her DPS was below peoples who were playing metabuilds. Surprise: Kitty kept up with the DPS on her simplified builds due to playing them with better efficiency that metabuild players who played multiply more difficult builds way more inefficiently and often having more issues with mechs since Kitty liked having some cheese in her builds. (like built-in stability for no-green Cairn before it became popular, though druids initially really hated Kitty for taking that 8k damage for extra 5s DPS uptime though she ofc had quick self-heal ready every time) When arcdps became more common, other skilled players started also using off-meta builds for variety as well as newer players for simplicity and that way effectiveness with kitless holo as good example. Wouldn't have happened without DPS meters. Though ofc players with inefficient builds (including metabuilds with wrong gears) and lack of skill enough to get outdps'd by healers got revealed but at least kinder commanders linked to resources for better builds and how to play them before kicking. Pre-Arcdps? Insta-kick for wrong spec or blaming and kicking that wrong spec for bad DPS after 1 wipe even if in fact they were the best DPS and some DH did stuff like pulled reds to group at VG wiping the group. Happened to Kitty as that wrong spec. And so, nothing has changed for squads that do require that performance within 10% of speedrunners: they haven't accepted off-meta and won't in the future. Those who aren't as strict don't really care about what you play as long as you can deliver the DPS or support stuffs like others for that role at that same performance level. Off-meta DPS just has the innate handicap of lower ceiling and thus requires relatively greater mastery than meta picks, though with some LI builds skill needed for mastery is pressing a few buttons every 30s.

It's kinda interesting on how people keep on saying "Number changes are stupid, we need revamps and new design." while this incoming patch is essentially all about numbers changes and people are more hype about it than about other patches in a long time. Yes, some builds are clunky and selfish but people have been ready to play such builds as long as they do good enough numbers. Meanwhile many weapons haven't seen any use simply because...numbers. Weapons mostly define the playstyles and useless weapon is a wasted playstyle as such so tweaking the numbers on weapon skills alone makes unused weapons more useful and since those tweaks don't affect other weapons, buffing the unused weapon skills doesn't contribute to powercreep if the boosts are less than what current optimal options do. Those buffs simply bring new alternative options. Meanwhile doing revamps to traits and specs has that very danger as they also affect the meta weapons and as such not making the unused ones any more useful in comparison.

Mechanist's baseline trait "Mech Fighter" says "New combat subroutines enable your mech to use Rocket Punch when you activate Skill 3 on your equipped weapon" but apparently it doesn't count the Kit skill 3's for that. Kitty tested with all kits and none of the skill 3s trigger the punch. Since that trait's Rocket Punch does have 5s cooldown but all weapon skills have at least 9s cooldown (7.2s with Alacrity), it strongly seems like kits were supposed to count as weapons for that trait as well. Fixing that to make kit skill 3s trigger the Rocket Punch as well would make using some kits somewhat playable. As side-effect, that also means that mechanist builds properly rotating skills have been doing less damage than intended but since optimizing the cooldowns for that trigger does require some planning, fixing it would reward good gameplay. Otherwise the cooldown could just be increased to 7 seconds so that it lines up with shortest cooldown, Rifle 3 (Net Shot).

Secret trick to big heals: Frost Bow. Heals more than Staff Water auto-attack and not bound to attunement and even allows you to trigger attunement swap stuffs.

Self-stun is there to interact with Outrage for big Berserk duration boost.

Thanks a lot for finally buffing quite a bunch of the unused weapons and skills! Lots of new builds to test!😸

One example would be Alacrity Duration runes as we don't have any yet. Mechanist could've got something to augment signets, Specter something for Wells, Harbaebae something for Elixirs, some Cantrip stuff for Untamed and Physical or movement-related for Willbender. Bladesworn maybe something ammo-related? And something to boost dodges for Vindicator and...whatever for Catalyst.

What Kitty personally wants to see is every spec being useable and also each weapon to have enough damage or support capabilities to be useable on some relevant build. Currently hammer on Guardian, Revenant and Warrior is so bad that Kitty's making legendary rifle, longbow and shortbow first even though hammer has twice as many potential users. Mace, rifle and off-hand sword on warr, daggers on spellbreaker, shortbow, sword and main-hand pistol (through dual-wields) on thief and greatsword on vindicator are some that sorely need a boost to their damage to become useful. If it tells anything that simply camping longbow on Berserker is better than using those aforementioned weapons. And the saddest thing is that EoD specs literally copied some of those warrior weapons (Mechanist, Untamed) and thief's main-hand pistol (Harbinger) and essentially doubled their power while also getting big deeps profession mechanic.

Thing is: 1. People want things to go smooth so they choose cookiecutter builds that are known to make things easy. 2. People want efficiency and, in case of GW2, are quite hellbent on that and that obviously leads to comparing cookiecutters versus builds with weaker kits for same role (even if said builds actually bring more to the fight in particular due to cookiecutter's specialties not being needed there). 3. People don't know better as not many know the full extent of their own class' capabilities (there's often some obscure interactions), not to mention knowing what all the other classes and their specific builds and how they interact with each other, often not even all the effective combos for their own build. As such, they resort to the sites with info about the builds but since people mostly look at a certain speedrun guild which only lists what they specifically have use for which in this age of broken meta leads to people just comparing everything to what's on those sites and if the build is not on those sites, "it is trash" as Kitty's seen some say in the past since if a speedrun guild doesn't have an use for it, it's not effective. After all, effectiveness is all that matters, bosses must die before any mechs happen and for those that can't be avoided, hardcarry is needed through role compression. And since people don't want to waste time, bosses must die with 2/3 left on the enrage timer so squad gets to stand and wait for ready check faster after wiping to inadequate support 'cause DPS which wasn' t enough to skip all mechanics/killing the boss and waiting at next since people need to swap gears and characters for best in slot builds. (Note: Kitty's ridiculing that mentality, she personally is sick of it) But with that mentality, not comparing isn't a solution and that mentality doesn't seem to change no matter what even if people knew better. The only way to increase accepted build variety with that mentality is bringing builds to same ballpark with equivalent advantages and trade-offs to what they can bring. Currently the subpar DPS builds (and esp. weapons) lack advantages and sometimes have massive trade-offs on top of that (abysmally low DPS, no support, melee range, hard rotation and supports low healing+hard trade-offs for dealing with mechs vs healing/booning, if there's even stab/aegis/projectile block available to begin with). Meanwhile some have advantages without trade-offs (DPS builds with big DPS, no skill needed, built-in support and long range and HAM+HB with massive support without meaningful trade-offs).

Update on the matter: Looks like it's now counting the dungeon runs properly again. However, if you had done the dungeon runs before the fix, you need to run again as still misses the explorables completed prior to the fix. Kinda super-annoying but gotta deal with it and somehow find squads for those runs apparently =.='

From what Kitty's been doing a couple personal spreadsheets for damage calculation, there's quite a chain of if(and/or) checks, multiplying and fetching numbers around going on to create the formula to specific skills. But the numbers on skills themselves should be pretty easy to adjust, you can find the basic information about those from API. That being said, unless the balance dev has done tons of testing and playing builds, they can only balance based on data from game and from numbers community provides of actual in-game circumstances. And Kitty doesn't frankly think that a balance dev, or even a team, would've done testing to that extent. Probably nobody has since Kitty's testing in 2018. (Kitty tested through metabuilds and the unused weapons, resulting in some new builds like PVE condi pistol deadeye at the time.) As such, Kitty's actually written specific long lists of number suggestions to make those weapons useful but to no avail this far. Hopefully they take a look at the list Kitty wrote in June 30th thread. Or...guess Kitty could just make a new thread.

In current situation with SoI nerfed and being forced to either choose heals or 5-target SoI and some other classes having access to high Resistance uptime (which was nerfed as a boon anyway) and pumping big boons, it wouldn't even be oppressive for Bountiful Disillusionment-trait to be returned to its former glory of sharing its boons to 5 players. It was an issue when Mesmer was able to spread its boons with old SoI but now? Nope. Might and Vigor could also get their base duration increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds and F1's might output increased from 5 stacks to 8 stack which still means 13 second ramp-up with Improved Alacrity, slower than any other class. Chaotic Transference could also be reworked to give Protection to allies after doing something like using Healing Skill and also sharing the Regen to allies you give Protection to. To address lowest heal output (only warr has weaker), Restorative Mantras could have Healing Power co-efficient increased from 0.5 to 0.7. Restorative Illusions could be changed to affect allies as well. Illusionary Inspiration could get "+2% Outgoing Healing when you summon an illusion. (8s, 10 stacks max)". With these changes, at least Heal Boon Chrono would become somewhat competent option though long Mantra recharges (esp. Mantra of Resolve's cleanse, could also get Regen) still limit the supportive capability. Healing output-wise Heal Boon Chrono wouldb e around 3500-4000 HPS per target which is about or slightly below average while having relatively high opportunity costs to be able to do same stuffs as other healers, if able at all. For comparison, Tempest heals about 5k, Heal Renegade about 5k and Heal Engis about 7-8k HPS. GotL druid heal for about 3000-3500 HPS but still has lots of utility at low opportunity cost to compensate.

Have you tried checking the "Adjust camera to character height" - checkbox? Kitty's been playing as asura in first-person for pewpewpew immersion and her camera was as low as asura's face with that setting. And everything looks monstrously big from that PoV.

When it comes to pure DPS meta, speedrunners are indeed the ones who create the meta comps since they push for the maximum DPS. Pug meta is a separate thing where builds with best "DPS/skill required" ratio rule and ofc a build with no rotation and 100% DPS uptime rules in such. (rifle/pistol+pistol kitless mechs, scourges, virtuosos, previously shortbow soulbeasts) Since it's mostly tryhards playing cata and trying to push their gaming to extreme, guess they indeed use them as reference for the build while using more casual players for builds with lower skill floor and lower DPS ceiling since tryhards don't usually use builds below maximum DPS ceiling. (as evident from Snowcrows' site as they've omitted quite a bunch of commonly used builds since they don't serve their purpose of speedrunning at max DPS)

Kitty's also ran into this issue this week on an alt account she's mostly used for raiding. Can't buy anything requiring explorables despite of having done enough explorables in 2 different dungeons (AC and CoE, 6 explorables per dungeon just for the sake of trying to figure out how the bug exactly works). Though randomly, the NPC is selling Sorrow's Embrace rare armors due to having done the story there at some point in the past pre-patch. And rare armors for AC as well after completing its story yesterday (AC rare armors have been the only thing that's become unlocked during this whole time). But still, dungeon-specifc exotic armors are fully locked. Things Kitty's tested now: -In Crucible of Eternity: 3 explorable paths, story mode, 3 explorable paths - didn't work. -In Ascalonian Catacombs: story mode, 6 explorable paths - didn't work. So, it seems like it isn't opening the dungeon-specific stuffs at all, doesn't seem to recognize having completed the paths. Not even story modes for the exotic dungeon armors. Update: Kitty now checked another account that had used tokens from the voucher for most dungeons due to crafting legendaries and on that particular account, most stuffs are unlocked as they should according to how the patch was worded...but the NPC isn't selling rare armors for AC even though it is selling rares and exotics for pretty much all the other dungeons, including exotics for AC. O_o So, the system is kinda totally inconsistent atm.

Something Kitty would like to see addressed simply to make Quickness actually somewhat useable on Warrior: please swap traits in Tactics around so that Vigorous Shouts and Martial Cadence wouldn't be mutually exclusive by both being Grandmaster traits. One possible way to do that is to move "Shrug It Off" to Adept, Vigorous Shouts to Master and Soldier's Comfort to Grandmaster (for choice of Quickness or heals on Soldier's Focus trigger) and adjusting them accordingly. Or just "Shrug It Off" to Grandmaster and Vigorous Shouts to Master. And Kitty also had bunch of suggestions as someone who's tested all kinds of builds (including most weapons not in use atm) in instanced content, open-world and at golem. These address the weapons that aren't improved now (thanks for addressing some on this patch!) and aren't being used in PVE by any experienced player except when memeing due to being noticeably weaker than their alternatives. Some of these also allow new build options without causing issues with currently used ones. You're already doing some changes to some weapons on this hotfix so Kitty won't give any suggestions to those before testing them out. Since these aremostly weapon-based change suggestions, they allow doing larger-scale adjustments with most used weapons if a profession as whole requires changes. For some weapon-related and trait changes (PVE-perspective)... Warrior Main-Hand Mace (to improve it's Confusion-capability while allowing power/confusion hybrid builds) -Auto-attack sequence: Reduce the cast time of the sequence from 2.9s to 2.1s. -Mace Smash: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.0. -Mace Bash: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.0. -Pommel Bash: Add 3 stacks of Confusion for 4s. (to match "hit to head causes confusion" as with zerker mace burst) -Primal Burst Skull Grinder: Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 1.8. Off-Hand Mace (improve role as power weapon with some CC) -Crushing Blow: Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 2.2. -Tremor: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.2. Off-Hand Sword (to make sword+sword/torch dualist-type build useable though still weaker option) -Impale: Increase damage multiplier from 0.5 to 1.0. -Rip: Add 5 stacks of Bleeding for 6s. Main-Hand Dagger (to make daggers slightly more competitive with axe in PVE) -Aura Slicer: Increase damage multiplier from 1.2 to 1.32. Off-Hand Dagger -Bladestorm: Increase damage multiplier from 2.45 to 2.8. (currently hardly outdamages auto-attacking while being the "ulti") Hammer -Currently suffers from exact same issues as Untamed's hammer, being a very similar weapon. When you figure out how to fix Untamed, you can apply many of same stuffs to Warrior's Hammer as well. Auto-attacks currently hit the same as Necromancer's dagger. (which also needs some fixing as skills aren't worth using over auto-attacks on Necromancer's main-hand dagger.) -Hammer Swing: Increase damage multiplier from 0.9 to 1.1. -Hammer Bash: Increase damage multiplier from 0.9 to 1.1. -Hammer Smash: Increase damage multiplier from 1.2 to 1.5. -Hammer Shock: Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.25. -Burst Earth Shaker: Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.5. (for comparison, Axe's Burst "Eviscerate" has 2.0/2.5/3.0 while being faster and a lot easier to use) -Primal Burst Rupturing Smash Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 2.2. (Decapitate has 2.5, for comparison, and Rupturing Smash isn't spammable like that and only has 1s Daze and 2s Immob and being AoE as advantages and this change would bring Rupturing Smash to about same level as Rifle's Gun Flame which has insane range advantage and short daze.) Traits -Roaring Reveille: Add Heal for 460 (0.5 Healing multiplier) when using Warhorn skills. (towards heal warrior becoming a thing) -Signet Mastery: Currently has the issue of giving Ferocity in a condi-based traitline, same issue as Furious Burst's Crit Rate boost basically. Thief Main-Hand Sword -Crippling Strike: Increase damage multiplier from 1.3 to 1.4. -Tactical Strike (Stealth Attack): Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.4. -Pistol Whip: Increase damage multiplier from 3.16 to 3.5. Main-Hand Pistol (to make Power Pistol+X builds more viable, still about 20% behind Dagger+Dagger after this change from Kitty's testing) -Vital Shot: Increase damage multiplier from 0.575 to 0.67. Off-Hand Dagger (to make sort of knifethrower build more viable though still inferior to riskier Death Blossom spam) -Dancing Dagger: Increase the duration of Torment from 6s to 8s. Shortbow (It's clearly been a condi weapon but it needs some boosting, esp. to make non-detonated Cluster Bombs less punishing as sometimes you need to target too close to hit the enemy that you can detonate the Cluster Bomb even with fastest 22222 spam). -Trick Shot: Increase damage multiplier from 0.55 to 0.7 on target while keeping it as 0.55 on bounces. -Cluster Bomb: Increase damage multiplier from 1.45 to 1.6 and increase the bleeding from 1 stack for 4s to 2 stacks for 4s. Revenant Hammer -Hammer is currently in a pretty horrible spot in PVE, even if it works in competitive (from what Kitty's heard.) It does have nice utilities but it hits kinda weakly and it's super-slow. From what Kitty did some testing on Power Renegade to compared swords, shortbow and hammer, in a rotation shortbow did 15755 DPS, sword+sword did 17388 DPS and hammer did...10560 DPS with weapon skills (excluding the DPS from F3 and utilities as common factor). As such, for hammer to be slightly more useful in comparison, it needs about 30-40% DPS boost. Due to long range and utilities on skills 3-4-5, it should stay under shortbow but something like 13,5-14k would be pretty good spot as such. As such, Kitty suggests... -Hammer Bolt: Reduce the animation from 1.25 seconds to 1 second. Increase damage modifier from 0.95 to 1.0. -Coalescence of Ruin: Increase damage modifier from 1.75 to 2.1. -Phase Smash: Increase damage modifier from 1.75 to 2.0. Guardian Hammer -It's currently pretty weak compared to other weapon options on guardian in PVE and the damage is VERY slow backloaded. From what Kitty's been playing over the years, the only real use it's had has been pushing enemies with Banish and then swapping to other weapons ASAP. Hammer also encourages very passive gameplay as it does best damage purely by auto-attacking with symbol and to keep up the symbol boost when using Zeal, using other skills is a DPS loss. To help fix that... -Hammer Swing: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.0. -Hammer Bash: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.1. -Symbol of Protection: Increase hammer hit's damage modifier from 1.0 to 1.6 and reduce symbol's damage modifier from 1.5 to 1.2. (Reduces the effect of symbol-enhancing traits which can be abused for big damage while boosting the base damage.) -Mighty Blow: Increase damage modifier from 2.1 to 2.4. -Glacial Blow: Increase the damage modifier from 2.4 to 2.8. (Taking Glacial Blow is mutually exclusive with Inspiring Virtue which is 8-10% DPS boost on Power Guardian builds) Mesmer Scepter -With staff buffs and condi chrono nerfs in the past, it's been kinda pointless to take scepter for any other purpose than for creating clones to trigger Illusionary Inspiration as Heal Chronomancer (which is still too weak to be considered an option by 99% of playerbase atm). To make it worth using again, it needs some boosting and to get it somewhat back in line, Kitty suggests boosting its Ambush to almost same level as staff's Chaos Vortex (which needs to be slightly stronger of the two, doing so by not giving Bleed to scepter ambush) and buffing torment in auto-attack and skill 2 (to reward good, a bit risky gameplay). -Ambush Ether Barrage: Increase Torment and Confusion duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds per stack. -Ether Bolt: Increase Torment duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. -Ether Blast: Increase Torment duration from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. -Illusionary Counter: Increase the amount of Torment stacks from 5 to 6 stacks. Untamed Hammer -As everyone knows, hammer has been greatly underperforming in PVE due to being designed for PVE. But, like with warrior, it might be redeemable to some point by increasing the damage modifiers as, like with warrior, they're low enough to hit like wet noodle. Tbh it greatly looks like the basic idea of this hammer was copied from warrior's in good and bad. -Hammer Strike: Increase damage multiplier from 0.8 to 1.0. -Hammer Slam: Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 1.2. -Heavy Smash: Increase damage multiplier from 1.4 to 1.6. -Wild Swing: Increase damage multiplier from 1.5 to 1.8 (Greatsword's Maul has 1.75 with a lot shorter cooldown though Untamed does have CD reduction trait to balance it). -Thump: Increase damage multiplier from 1.25 to 1.4. -Unleashed Wild Schwing: Increase damage multiplier from 2.16 to 2.3. -Unleashed Thump: Increase damage multiplier from 2.3 to 2.5. Engineer -Engineer currently has lots of good stuff, including some overtly good stuff but also bunch of skills that aren't used at all aside from some very very niche cases. Tool Kit and Elixir Gun are kinda criminally underused due to their underwhelming effectiveness and as such, Kitty has bunch of suggestions to help them out. Tool Kit also could get a small update to mech age. Elixir Gun -EG is currently mainly used for healing and some blast finishers though it also has bunch of condi capability that's left completely unused due to inadequate numbers. Effect-wise it's kinda similar to Thief's shortbow but different playstyle. It could use an update to become a poisonous weapon to use. -Tranquilizer Dart: Increase damage efficient from 0.4 to 0.65. Increase the duration of Bleeding from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. (Slightly better Bleed than in Thief's Trick Shot but this doesn't have bounce for "AoE") -Glob Shot: In addition to previous effects, apply 3 stacks of Poison for 4 seconds. -Fumigate: Increase the duration of Poison from 2 seconds to 6 seconds. Increase the damage modifier from 0.4 to 0.8. (It has long cast time and loses to main-hand pistol's Poison Dart Volley, 5 stack of Poison for 8 seconds untraited and 12s traited) a LOT, though shorter Poison duration and longer cast time on Fumigate can be justified with cleanse and Vulnerability.) -Acid Bomb: In addition to previous effects, apply 2 stacks of Poison for 4 seconds on every pulse. (Currently it's a pure strike damage field which feels weird considering the skill's name and auto-attack+Fumigate being condi skills so for clear role for the kit as hybrid condi/heal kit, this skill should also reflect that idea instead of being random strike damage skill.) Tool Kit -This kit has been kind of a mixed bag of stuff with main common factor being names somewhat resembling each other and Gear Shield and Magnet being sort of utility skills. During the mech age, it'd be also kinda fit for an engineer to be able to fix the mech since engineer's already shown ability in fixing Canthan electricity stuffs and Turrets. Since Tool Kit shares some aspects of hammer on some other professions, some of those fixes apply here. Considering that Engineer has confusion in various places across the kit and this also having some in Pry Bar, this could be modified to become a part of Power/Confusion hybrid build. Kitty's suggestions... -Smack: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.0. Now also heals the mech in addition to turrets. -Whack: Increase damage modifier from 0.8 to 1.0. Now also heals the mech in addition to turrets. -Reduce the animation time of auto-attack sequence from 3.23 seconds to 2.7 seconds. -Box of Nails: Increase the duration of of Bleed from 2 seconds to 6 seconds. (Currently it's like poor thief's Caltrops, kinda literally. Considering that auto-attack chain and toolbelt skill are strike damage-focused and Pry Bar is also mostly strike damage, having a random condi skill in the mix is kinda weird unless you add some Confusion to auto-attack chain and increase Confusion in Pry Bar. In Kitty's opinion, Pry Bar could take over this slot and be replaced by Power Drill, Machine Saw or Jackhammer in slot 3. Charrs have already demonstrated their capability of building those. Flamethrower Kit -As Kitty mentioned before, this has use in competitive gamemodes as well as in the Open-World due to Juggernaut-trait but when it comes to damage, there's still way better options and if this is taken by condi engineer builds, increasingly rare choice due to Bombs, 'Nades and elite spec-specific skills becoming stronger, it's taken for toolbelt skill, Napalm or Flame Blast. As a niche use in instanced content, Air Blast has also worked for pushes and auto-attack's fast attack rate has made it Kitty's choice for pushing the orb at Keep Construct but it's been a major damage loss. This does have some good potential for Power/Burn hybrid builds, though. But since this is still seeing major use outside instanced content, whether this could use these changes or not is up for your discretion. -Flame Jet: Apply 1 stack of burning for 2 seconds on every hit and 3 stacks of Burning for 2 seconds on final hit. (The auto-attack takes quite long to fully channel with a short pause between casts and thus some extra damage would be useful. Since we're talking about Flamethrower, it also feels really weird that you basically shoot massive flame jet at something and it hardly catches any burn at all and somehow takes lots of strike damage which is more the type of smashing or slashing stuff O_o Though even then, the DPS of auto-attack is about 20-30% lower than on most DPS-focused weapons. "There's too much boring and too little burning. Torch it all!") -Flame Blast: Increase the amount of Burning from Explosion from 2 stacks to 3 stacks. (Helps at making Flamethrower more viable again in kitspam e-spec builds). Elementalist -This is a bit in Kitty's wishlist territory as most Elementalist weapons are still performing pretty well. Elementalist has relatively wide use for most weapons though these days Scepter is dominating DPS Tempest, Sword is dominating DPS Weaver and Hammer is dominating DPS Catalyst. DPS-wise main-hand Dagger is kinda falling out of fashion due to other options outperforming it and also kinda janky gameplay in Fire. For condi, main-hand dagger is still a good option but at least to Kitty, it's falling a bit short in power DPS, esp. in Air attunement. Staff is also quite underwhelming in non-healing uses. So... Main-hand Dagger -Lightning Whip: Increase damage modifier from 1.26 to 1.38. -Convergence: Increase damage modifier from 1.4 to 1.5. Staff -Fireball: Increase the attack speed from 1 attack per 1.4 seconds to 1 attack per 1.2 seconds. Increase damage modifier from 1.0 to 1.2. Apply 1 stack of Burning for 4 seconds. (This skill really needs these due to slow attack speed.) -Meteor Shower: Increase the minimum damage modifier from 0.32 to 0.4. -Chain Lightning: Increase the damage modifier of initial hit from 0.66 to 0.8. (Slow attack that requires bounce back from secondary target. 0.66 would work if the skill did a secondary hit at 0.6 on primary target if there was no secondary targets around.) -Lightning Surge: Increase damage modifier from 1.44 to 1.6. Reduce recharge from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. (If the opponent isn't moving, this is the only attack aside from auto-attack in Air attunement and for slot 2, this has a long recharge compared to most weapons.)

Kitty would kinda like to hear anyone explain just how did this patch make professions homogenous aside from basically changing the name and effect of some unique boons to standard ones (Spirits, Banners, AP, Spotter, PD) and giving some classes similar capability to some trait (Fury in Ele's Air and Mesmer's Dueling)? True, now Quickness and Alacrity aren't just Chronomancer's staple anymore but at least booning isn't the trade of four anymore and basically they're unlocking support roles for other classes as well now. After all, it's hard to be unique if you're not around to begin with. Also, contrary to belief of some here, Perfect Balance doesn't mean playing the same exact thing. It means getting similar results through possibly different means. Even the results don't need to be the same as long as all the competitors have similar advantage/disadvantage ratio. As far as Kitty's seen, GW2 doesn't even have any major issues with classes feeling the same as most have totally different profession mechanics, though some do share minion/illusion/pet-type of mechanic but pretty much every single MMO has that particular thing 'cause everyone likes having friends (usually). Kitty does admit that they did reuse some animations on the new e-specs but even then, they do have different feel and use. Think of Paper-Scissors-Rock. Not everyone plays the same and choosing any of them has the same chance of win, draw or loss depending on what your opponent chooses. (excluding possible personal biases making a person take one more often than others but that's on player, not the game) Besides, banners work the same as before though you can now move them (though they really need their old bundle skills back and either Martial Cadence or Vigorous Shouts moved to different column so Heal Quick Warrior could become a thing as it can't exist when Quickness and Shout heals are exclusive). Spirits work the same as before, just changed the buff. Druid actually has more room to choose 3rd spec now as Skirmishing isn't "mandatory" anymore. Alacrity Soulbeast is now an option since you can either take Moa Stance or Ritualist gears for Boon Duration and take 3 Spirits for full Alacrity. In other words, ranger got AlacDPS as new role. Rev's Tablet can now be used a lot more actively and versatilely since you don't need to worry about energy cost of moving the tablet anymore, don't need to spam Natural Harmony for Alacrity and that opens some interesting plays. Though admittedly Heal Vindicator was sacrificed as result but it might rise again. Power Rev builds also can now choose between 250 extra power or furybotting while previously AP was the default. On Tempest you're not a pure healer anymore nor a suppressed boonbot healer (which became a case with Heal Catalyst) with the addition of Alacrity. Now Tempest has basically doubled amount of builds available based on trait choices and it's has a role as a healer again. If you think it doesn't heal enough, just a friendly reminder: Frost Bow (kinda must with boonbot healers on Ele due to boons being tied to attunements). On a sidenote, good Mightbot Heal Tempests were using it already before EoD. And that's just what happened with this balance patch. Kitty won't go any deeper here 'cause she's not feeling like writing an encyclopedia and light novel about the whole spectrum of playstyles and builds in this game and how they get affected by balance patches. If you're ready to accept 15-20% handicap in DPS race, the number of your available playstyles increases exponentially compared to sticking to meta.

Kitty's defining shorties (she's mainly playing instanced content and some open-world on side for legendaries): Core: Fractals and master the world for leggies! LWS2: Ahem. There's sand on Kitty's boots. HoT: Raids, best metas, glider, those chakkin' chaks. And chrono and dudu. #SupportLife LWS3: Countless hours berryfarming (not good for brain) and 2-week holiday in Draconis Mons (10/10 will never go again) PoF: Kitty hates sand. It's rough and coarse and gets everywhere. Though mounts are good. And Firebrand...in both good and bad. LWS4: Praise Joko. And all the Alt+F4 ragequits when people were slightly faster than Kitty and forced her to do a dozen DF metas instead of couple to finish Soul Binder achiev for Vision (fastest route to temporary misantrophy) IBS: Strikes, daily Bjora roundabout and Drizzlewood faming. EoD: mechanist, easy gold from weekly A.S.S.es, more strikes, best aesthetics (Arborstone ❤️ though needs some cleanup) and most epic world boss with best BGM.

Kitty did. 59 Spirit Shards before and after.

Kitty bought 65 Dessa's Experiment Journal's from fractal merchants. After using them with Consume All, they didn't give any Spirit Shards like they should give. Broken? Apparently that item doesn't have "Consume All" so...Kitty must've pressed "Destroy" from muscle memory of consuming stuffs. kitten. Adding "Consume All" would be nice, though, to avoid clicking a LOT.

Kitty finally made Bolt yesterday and today upon inspecting the text from adding it to armory, it read "Interwoven with an impression of a dragon whose name Tyria is yet to learn, Bolt is imbued with strength of a storm-swelling inside it like a thunderous inferno, eager to aid its wielder in combat". Upon taking a closer look at it, especially at hilt, there's indeed a dragon head, there's a noodle woven in the structure of the blade and claws like Soo-Won's. As a whole, it does resemble our now-familiar (albeit shorter and fancier) noodle a lot in Kitty's opinion. For reference, image from wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/a/a6/Bolt.jpg/1280px-Bolt.jpg Any thoughts? Did Anet already sneaky-spoil Soo-Won's appearance long ago?