InfamousBrad.5879

Hasn't it always been three weeks?

For the love of all holy gods, please tell me that's on top of what it already does, and not instead? Because if Signet of Shadows loses stealth on kill, I'm finally once and for all done with my Thief characters. Also, all those Elementalist changes and still not the one that gets asked for the most: can we please have Glyph of Minor Elementals turned into an ammunition power, so that we can get all of our pets back after coming out of the water, or dismounting, or zoning? If not, why the heck not?

Where does Floyd "Castle" Grubb fit into this?

Right this minute, on my original game account (NCsoft launcher, all expansions and seasons) there's a promotional item, almost any outfit for 630 gems each. When I log into my new f2p alt account, created through Steam, it's not listed. Bug? If not, why not?

I mean, we'll all see how it goes, but absent any kind of design document, I feel like that patch-note preview doubles down on some flawed decision-making from around the time of Heart of Thorns. Content that was designed for Team Casual can be completed by just about anybody with just about any build; at most, throw a couple more bodies at it. For example, if one person in a bad build with bad gear can't solo a Champion, certainly 2-3 of them can, and there's nothing stopping them from waiting until another 1 or 2 come along. Content that was designed for Team Try-Hard was originally designed so that with reasonably good exotic gearing and the right runes and sigils, any combination of players who take their AoE heal and buff powers can stack enough heals and enough buffs to complete the content; you certainly can play almost all fractals that way, for example. But ever since around Heart of Thorns, more and more of the Team Try-Hard content has been designed around edge cases where, with just the right builds, the whole team can reach the buff cap. And content that that perfect team match can't just steamroller is unplayable by any team other than theirs. That's how we ended up with a "meta" where if you're not a Mechanist or a Quickness Firebrand, you're a drag on the team. Remaking every profession and every build so that they can also push out the exact same list of buffs as a Mechanist and a Quickness Firebrand is not exactly how I would go with it. Me, I would accept the fact that the game will be stupidly easy with certain impossible-to-balance-for weird combinations of builds -- and make it so that there's no real incentive to do so, make it so that that doesn't get you any more rewards than the less optimized builds or any faster, through things like time gates. Let the edgiest edgelords on Team Try-Hard show off how fast they can clear Slothosaur or Su-Won, as long as what you give them for that doesn't make everybody else feel left out.

I made another run at a minions elementalist, after watching some new guy who didn't know any better play one on YouTube. Two VERY small changes would make a huge difference for the whole Glyphs line: As far as I can tell, this is the only minion-summoning power that dismisses when you mount. For example, Necromancer's "Bone Fiend" doesn't just remember you have a pet out, it remembers how many. Keeping all three pets out requires constant fiddling. Any chance of making this an ammo skill? So that you can summon all three when you first map zone or enter an instance, but then can only resummon them at the current rate? The bigger change I wish would be for both this and the master-skill equivalent to also work underwater. Hey, necromancer minions didn't used to work under water, either. I can dream.

200 Writs is a lot, and the fastest way to get Dragon's End writs is to attempt the meta anyway. The way I see it, all this does is guarantee that if you fail the meta a certain number of times in a row, you'll still get your turtle egg. (I'm bad at math, one failed run is, what 30 writs? Maybe 40?)

So, next relink is the 19th? Am I figuring that right?