Ara the Elegant.6825

Mugwump here. Taking a look at my old comment a year+ later, I'm honestly pretty surprised at how close I was to Specter.

I would also like to have some kind of official word from ANet on this. If it's intended to be a 5000g item on the TP with rarity on par with most infusions, the least ANet could do at this point is confirm that the drop rate is functioning as intended. Otherwise, it would be nice to know if they have plans to change something. Anything short of word from ANet directly is pure speculation with no basis in fact.

Agreed, it has a different feel than the GW1 version, doesn't look as good. Liked Eve's armor in Prophecies, don't really care for this outfit at all. Makes me want to rethink every time I wished for a certain GW1 outfit to be brought back.

The introduction of 'Prestige Races' or 'Elite Races' that start at level 80 and have their own armor skins / outfits, so ANet doesn't have to bother adding new 1-80 Personal Story instances, leveling content, backwards-compatible armor skins or outfits for the hundreds of sets already in the game.

I enjoy the idea of heroes from another land showing up for a conflict. But, as a few other people here have pointed out, ANet has been relying very heavily on old ideas, rehashing lore, and using old villains to tell new stories. I think the world of Tyria would feel much more alive and real if we visited far away lands and encountered very alien people and cultures. Wouldn't be hard to work into a story, either. I had a thought a while ago - maybe a year or two - that ANet could replace the in-game world map with a globe that you could cling-and-drag to rotate. Would serve the same function as the one we have now, with waypoints in Tyria, Elona, and (soon) Cantha. But it would also have the rest of the world in there, for potential implementation. As the world expands, the in-game map grows bigger and bigger. When Cantha arrives, they may just extend the map downward, the way they did for Elona, or they may go the way of GW1 and add an icon to the map which brings you to another area. But I'd like to see a globe, myself.

Yeah, it's frustrating to see the inequity of lifesteal in the game. In an ideal world, Battle Scars would be tied into Shiro, instead of into a traitline, for the sake of thematic continuity. Maybe as a replacement for the Shiro True Nature, or something. It would make more sense, seeing as it's so specifically a Shiro ability, as opposed to a general Revenant ability. None of the other legends really had lifesteal abilities, that I can recall. Thief is such a weird case, because I would never expect that class to have lifesteal as it doesn't fit with the theme to me. Yet there it is. And like you said, it's unreliable, so nobody's going to want to build on it too much. Of all the classes to have it, necro is the one that makes the most sense thematically. It's right there, but you still can't really do anything with it. So close, yet so far. I think they could probably tune the necro abilities alone, without over-buffing the revenant abilities or messing with the thief ones just yet. They should be able to balance the necro traits and skills specifically, without having to change the way the game handles all lifesteal, as that could be potentially disastrous for balance, in a number of ways. If making it able to crit isn't workable, then just upping the damage packets a bit would probably do it, as a band-aid soloution.

Not too long ago, I built a core necro in exotic zerk and designed him around the lifesteal theme. Survivability was pretty good, but even in full zerk it took forever to kill anything. It may technically have been 'viable' in that it would eventually have gotten me through most content, but it honestly wasn't up to snuff. It's a play style that just isn't supported by the game, and I don't get why. With just a bit more damage - maybe even at a cost of less healing - necro life steal abilities could be viable. However, whether it's the trait(s) or the dagger/warhorn skills, they are very underwhelming, like you said. GW1 also nerfed Blood Magic into the ground, to the point where necros couldn't realistically run lifesteal-based builds in most dungeons, etc. The trend seem to indicate that ANet doesn't want necros being able to rely on it. Edit: To clarify a point.

I can't ever recall Lifesteal that could crit. When was this? I don't personally recall lifesteal being able to crit at all, so if it ever was then it must have been a long time ago. Definitely pre-HoT. Maybe like 2013?

Some scaling adjustment is in order. Blood Magic is too much of a dps loss to justify taking on any power build, so it mostly just gets used for support. I guess that's fine for supports, but as a dps necro with full zerk-scholar, I can't take Blood no matter how badly I want to make a vamp-themed necro. Or, like Josiah said, if the damage portion could crit, that would probably handle it.

I'll have to get that one. I spent some time last year obtaining a lot of those skins for my mesmer, but stopped short. I was very disappointed when I saw there was no staff, felt like there wasn't much point in designing my character around a theme if I'm not able to complete it. The Pinnacle staff skin works well for mesmer, but I'm still about 1500ap away from that, give or take.

Would very much like to see staff added. I don't recall off-hand if there's a trident in that collection, but if there isn't then it should be there, as well.

For Mesmer, I'd like to see the devs look into the theme of Lyssa's duality. It's the only god who is represented by two separate beings, so they could do something with that. Maybe have 2 open slots for illusions, and the third slot taken by a permanent illusion, and shatter skills happen around it? Or maybe leave all 3 illusion slots, but just add a permanent clone as part of the theme of the duality of lyssa. Just a couple thoughts.

I'd like to see necro's lifesteal capabilities brought inline with revenant's Battle Scars. I don't see why lifesteal abilities that deal so little damage and offer so little healing should have ICDs at all. I realize that it offers sustain and that's a big deal, but it's so heavily capped right now that it's hardly useful, in my experience. Some ideas: I would merge all necro's lifesteal traits into Vampirism and change it to a player-only trait that grants stacks of lifesteal based on a certain qualifier.Revenants can gain 1 stack of Battle Scars for applying a stack of vuln, 5 stacks for using their heal skill, and 1 stack per second while in combat, and there's no ICD because you're just consuming stacks of a buff. So maybe necro should gain 1 stack of Vampirism per second, as well as 5 stacks for applying chill or fear.Or maybe gain 1 stack of Vampirism for each stack of any condition they apply to an enemy (e. g. Shroud 1 with Unyielding Blast traited would grant 2 stacks of Vampirism per strike).Just some thoughts. But revenant with Battle Scars feels the way necro with Blood Magic should.

CoF's gate being locked can certainly be a pain. However, there are a number of ways past it. Somebody on this board already mentioned using the skyscale to do it. You can also do it with a springer, as well as a well-timed and well-placed shadowstep. I used to get pretty fed up with CoF being closed off when I wanted to continue, but it's honestly very easy to just open it, once you see how. I'd recommend looking around for a guide. I'd rather not go into a detailed explanation, or link anything, on this page, because I don't want ANet to patch it out. The whole idea of locking it behind an event chain makes sense on paper, but in actual practice it doesn't work when the map is nearly vacant of any players. The event chain can take a while to start, if you arrive on the map with a closed gate, and that can be very frustrating, as you are unable to do anything about it until such a time as the event pops up. Furthermore, many players might not even know which NPC starts the event, or where, making it even more unlikely that it'll be opened up again any time soon. I'd say that locking the gate served its purpose, back when there were a lot of players on this map, who needed to be actively encouraged to engage with the content, rather than just popping into the map long enough to move on into the dungeon. But that time has passed, and at this point it just makes more sense to allow those few players who want to do CoF get into the dungeon when they please.

I used to struggle with losing my cursor on the screen during messy encounters. YoloMouse helped a lot. I get that you don't want to use it, but I'd recommend giving it a second consideration and take a chance on it. It really helped me out with the same problem, and can be customized a bit. Very easy to install and tweak with a guide.