4141

The thief’s big channeled aoe is kind of dumb versus a big WvW sort of fight because the heart of the scrum is filled with aoes that will be hitting you all this time too, and you are after all rather fragile.

I was describing it as fun and even useful when you walk into a big PvE melee that is already in progress, since you are distributing lots of damage all over the place, and the enemies already have aggro and their targets, and if they do switch, you can vanish.

I suppose it’s usable in PvP when players are already engaged and the melee isn’t so big that you can’t see anything for the particles… In a moderate sized encounter you will be splashing damage all over the place and odds are no one will switch targets during the few seconds you are doing your silly little dagger-tornado dance.

4142

Thief basic damage seems disappointingly low to me considering that warriors seem to do more damage with better armor.

However, you can make some decent combos, even when it’s not officially a finishing move. Have you noticed that your basic melee dagger attack has an alternate stealth backstab that does a lot of damage? Just keep on hitting the vanish attack and moving a couple of steps to the foe’s back to activate the backstab.

Personally I dislike the shadow step, effective as it is, because I keep forgetting whether I am in step-forward or step-back mode, and wind up out of combat or off to the side when I hit the wrong key. Not an issue with double daggers, since it has no shadow step, just leaps to target.

4143

Warrior is better at mitigating damage, thief is better at not taking the damage to being with.

4144

I don’t know about Mesmer, but with Ele you can’t just get away with one weapon for all situations at higher levels. It depends whether you need AOE, maximum direct damage, or a more conservative approach, and that’s before you swap around your attunements. Daggers are my go-to PvE setup, but I swap them around quite often depending on the situation, which is slightly annoying with Ele because that means you have to go into the inventory and drag stuff around (especially in WvW where situations change fast), but it gives you the most flexibility. I’ve found scepter / focus or scepter / dagger to be the best option in some situations although I probably use those combos the least. Speaking of combos, dual daggers FTW! (kaboom!)

4145

I’m settling into a rhythm with scepter, sword, pistol, and torch in various combinations. Scepter and torch are nice for confusion and escape, and sword and pistol have a lot of capacity for causing incoming abilities to miss.

4146

The thief spinny ult can be nice and survivable, particularly if you use it as a drain field combo finisher… considering it makes you reflect normal ranged attacks, you should heal heavily unless you are in the middle of a lot of red circles.

Generally in a large fight I try to take advantage of thief’s easy access to blast finisher on shortbow. I also pick utility skills with combo fields, so I try to make sure the group has at least one field available all the time.

Anyway I would second the suggestion to pve with alt hand dagger. Whether you choose to main hand dagger sword or pistol, you should be able to kill most enemies in basically 2 #5 backstabs + some #1 attacks. If you either dodge or use a 3 skill to evade correctly, you take no damage. Against multiple enemies, using #4 and kiting is effective. Vs more, you should kite with shortbow for its superior AOE damage. Anyway, obviously situations vary.

I avoid things like blind or interrupts in PVE outside of dungeons, because they take up a lot of combo points and don’t do much damage. Versus bosses (with the unstoppable indicator or whatever), I found it a lot more effective to use the #4 dazing shot with pistol to interrupt, rather than blind (since bosses are highly resistant to blind).

4147

Neat trick - you can right-click on the equipment slot itself, and then select a weapon, rather than having to open up your inventory and drag something into the slot.

4148

Patch notes! Not gonna lie, pretty excited to see the dungeon fixes.

General
• Fixes to LOD on numerous objects in the world.
• Fixes to maps to prevent players from moving outside of the playable area.
• Fixed a bug that made pet footsteps excessively loud, especially in water.
• Fixed a bug with assists not working in keg brawl.
• Fixed numerous blocked events.
• Updated text and functionality when purchasing bank slots.
• Fixed loud sounds on portals to the Underworld in Godslost Swamp.
• Fixed several bugs that were preventing some skill challenges from resetting properly.
• All recipe items are now account bound. Many were previously soulbound.
• Updated Superior Rune of the Ogre Rock Dog so that it doesn’t summon when the player is underwater.
• Updated Sigil of Demon Summoning so that it doesn’t summon when the player is underwater.
• Summoned rock dogs and fleshreavers die when they enter water.
• Removed the lone 1 copper from city map completion rewards.
• Removed Mystic Forge recipes that were being used to reduce surplus supplies.
• Enemies in tutorial areas will no long drop loot. Instead, an award of 72 copper has been added to the rewards for completing the tutorial. This is to dissuade players from lingering in tutorial instances to farm the creatures in them.
• Obsidian Shards are now account bound.
• Box of Berserker’s Draconian Armor and Box of Rampager’s Draconian Armor now reward the proper items.
• Fixed various crash bugs.
• Added the rank 30-39 wolf finishing move.
• Fixed recipes for the Mystic Artifact, Mystic Barricade, and Mystic Trident.
• Fixed visible map completion percentage errors and the achievement not completing.
• Applied 10-second cooldown to Bowl of Saffron-scented Poultry Soup buff. This was done to keep elementalists from spamming condition removal with Signet of Restoration.

Black Lion Trading Company
• Added functionality and improvements to the Black Lion Chests, including a chance to receive new items like a permanent version of the Black Lion Trader Express or a Mystic Forge Conduit.
• Black Lion Salvage Kits now properly display the correct percentages for rare materials.

Story
• Adjusted difficulty for the following story steps: “A Fragile Peace,” “Breaking the Bone Ship,” “Killing Fields,” “Political Homicide,” “Sabotage,” “Set to Blow,” “Stand By Your Krewe,” “The Ringmaster,” “The Stone Sheath,” “Track the Seraph,” “Unscheduled Delay,” “Unwelcome Visitors,” and “Welcome Home.”
• Fixed bugs in the following story steps: “A Fragile Peace,” “Against the Corruption,” “Bad Blood,” “Forging the Pact,” “Stand By Your Krewe,” and “Tower Down.”
• Fixed exploits in “The Sound of Psi-Lance.”
• End of Story Loot Bags:
o These have been improved to only give green or better gear of level 78 or higher.
o The number of bags received has been reduced from 5 to 3.
o More improvements will be made in coming weeks. Players who complete the story before the final update will be equally compensated once the new rewards are in.

Dungeons
General
• Updated vendors in the Ascalonian Catacombs and Caudecus’s Manor to sell level 80 versions of their unique skins rather than level 60 and 70. Players who purchased the level 60 and 70 versions will soon be given the opportunity to upgrade those to level 80 without having to use transmutation stones.
Citadel of Flame
• Fixed an exploit in Magg’s chain that was allowing players to skip the entire dungeon and still be rewarded.
• In Magg’s chain, if Magg happens to die in the lava field, he’ll teleport himself to the start of the area just outside it.
• In Magg’s chain, Magg must be much closer to things to draw their initial aggro. This only affects the escort to the magmacyte rock.
Caudecus’s Manor
• Fixed an exploit that was allowing players to skip content.
Honor of the Waves
• Fixed a bug in the Butcher’s chain that prevented a boss from spawning.
Arah
• Fixed a blocking issue.
Ascalonian Catacombs
• Fixed blocking bugs in Detha’s chain.

Dungeon Rewards
We’ve made some significant updates to dungeon rewards. I wanted to try and clarify them here. All of these changes have been the result of an original exploit which was letting players receive upwards of 20 levels by completing a single dungeon run. We initially closed this exploit, which caused some new problems. The result is this new system which should increase dungeon rewards for players who play though them normally but help curb inflation of rewards for those who are using exploitative methods to farm them.

  1. Dungeon tokens are now rewarded at the end of an explorable chain. This was done to stop players from repeatedly entering a chain and farming the first boss that dropped tokens rather than playing the entire chain. At some point in the near future, we will make up for this by making dungeon tokens a rare drop so that even players who are not completing a chain can make partial progress toward the rewards.
  2. Dungeons reward 20 tokens for completion and now reward an additional 40 tokens for the first time they are completed each day. This means that if players can complete all 3 chains of a dungeon in a day, they’ll receive a total of 180 tokens, which is enough to purchase some of the smaller rewards.
  3. Dungeon tokens should be account bound. This will allow players to have a single character farm tokens for their other characters.

Professions
General
• Implemented a fix to make Heartseeker, Lightning Leap, Flame Leap, and Monarch’s Leap hit more reliably.

Elementalist
• Fixed bugs with Flamestrike and Ice Shards so they can’t be fired behind the player.
• Quick Glyphs: This Air Magic trait has been updated to apply 20% recharge reduction to the elite skill Glyph of Elementals.

Engineer
• Grenade Barrage: This Grenade Kit skill should now be usable underwater.
• Short Fuse: This trait is no longer overwritten by the Grenadier trait. Also, this trait now works with underwater grenades.
• Speedy Kits: Added a 5-second recharge to the trigger for this trait. This was to prevent players from exploiting it to gain vigor buffs of extreme duration.
• Invigorating Speed: Added a 5-second recharge to the trigger for this trait. This was to prevent players from exploiting it to gain vigor buffs of extreme duration.

Guardian
• Merciful Intervention: This skill has been updated to work with the Meditation Mastery trait. The tooltip for this skill has also been updated to display the healing amount when affected by traits.
• Elusive Power: This trait has been updated to not grant might when aegis was blocked.

Mesmer
• Fixed text on “readied” mantra buffs.
• Veil: This glamour skill has been updated to show the appropriate active duration when not affected by traits.

Necromancer
• Taste of Death: This skill’s healing fact has been updated.
• Spectral Wall: This skill has been updated to apply the correct amount of vulnerability (10).
• Vampiric: Fixed a bug with this trait so that it now functions with projectiles.
• Close to Death: This trait has been updated to provide its listed 20% boost instead of the previous (unlisted) 10% boost.
• Banshee’s Wail: This Curses trait has been updated to apply extra swiftness.
• Spectral Walk: This skill has been updated to be more active and to work properly with its recharge trait. Also, Sever Spectral Bond has been changed to Spectral Recall.
• Minion Master: This Death Magic trait has been updated to properly affect the elite skill Summon Flesh Golem.
• Putrid Mark: This skill has been fixed to make it properly unblockable with the Greater Marks trait.
• Mark of Evasion: This trait can now trigger the Soul Marks trait.
• Reaper’s Protection: This trait has been updated to properly work with a variety of crowd-control effects.
Thief
• Bountiful Theft: This strait has been fixed so that it doesn’t apply 15 seconds of vigor twice.

Races
Norn
• Call Wurm: Autocasting has been removed from this skill to prevent an exploit. Additionally, the skill may now be cast on the move.

Player versus Player
• Legacy of the Foefire: Fixed an exploit that was allowing players to teleport past one of the gates.

World versus World
• Experimental Rifle: This item is no longer usable in World versus World.

4149

“Fixed bugs in the following story steps: “A Fragile Peace,” “Against the Corruption,” “Bad Blood,” “Forging the Pact,” “Stand By Your Krewe,” and “Tower Down.””

Except Forging the Pact is still bugged, just as it has been for weeks. Just as it has been for the past several patches that were supposed to fix it.

It wouldn’t be so bothersome were the mission not so damned long, and if the NPCs did more than suck and die. (and stand around breaking the script)

4150

Thanks for the WvW Thief tips, guys. Thinking about the different WvW play style required, I finally realized why there are wolf packs of running around: practice.

4151

The Stand by Your Krewe quest was the one I was having issues on with my Thief. I one shotted it with no problems after this fix. Glad to know it wasn’t my fault!

4152

• Removed Mystic Forge recipes that were being used to reduce surplus supplies.

Uh-oh. I think the stacks of iron and soft wood I put up on the trading post just before going to bed are now worthless.

4153

They still haven’t fixed Tower Down. Done it twice now, same result - it doesn’t recognise when you’ve killed all the undead after the last tower is destroyed. Apparently it bugs out if you don’t kill all the undead on the first beach quickly enough, or if you kill a risen krait on the final beach before the tower is destroyed. There’s some kind of workaround that I’ll try, but it’s really quite annoying especially as they’ve tried to fix this in three patches so far.

4154

If you are stuck on any personal story elements, you can always graveyard-rush it. Re-spawning at the start of the quest does not reset the story.

4155

The problem with mine was the boss would spawn on top of you in the graveyard and pretty much kill you as you rezzed.

4156

In Tower Down you can easily kill all the risen, but the story never progresses any further. Apparently it’s something to do with a risen getting stuck inside tower debris after they’ve been destroyed, meaning there’s always one hidden somewhere that you can’t kill. The only way forward is to leave the instance.

The only workaround I’ve seen that might work is to go backwards and pull every single mob individually from the towers before the demolitionist can blow them up. If you do it in reverse order the script doesn’t trigger until you’ve killed all the risen by the time you reach the first tower. However, having done this mission twice so far tonight I can’t be arsed doing it again right now.

It’s such a massive game that some bugs are pretty much unavoidable, but it’s always frustrating when it happens to you.

4157

How do you guys go about gathering globs of ectoplasm in an… Efficent manner? Ihavent got a rare item in a while, even with globs of magic find. If anyone would like to trade some ecto for orichalcum ore, I have loads and loads of that.

Ugh, there has to be a better way to find it then to just hope you can find a level 80 rare, right?

4158

Does anyone have the problem with their weapon swap where it doesn’t always work?
I have it mapped to one of my mouse buttons and the ~ key. Sometimes neither of them work. Is it just me? Am I doing it wrong?

4159

As a piece of anecdata, I just ran through Forging the Pact and the only hiccup I had was getting a disabled content error pop-up every time I killed a risen grub.

Also of note, monthly achievements reset for me today. They said it would be on the first of the month and I assume someone just set the clocks wrong since it’s been a month since headstart.

4160

Still can’t play do to that e-mail/password issue:(

At the rate this is going, you’ll all have quit before I can get into the game.