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^ i still don't get how you have such difficulty living in heavy armor when i was staying alive just fine on a low level dual 1h sword mesmer.

I don't either.....it just seems like I take way too much damage. I can only dodge twice without waiting for endurance, which is no problem against 1 enemy (them taking me down 1v1 to the amounts I listed was just facetanking them, not with dodging and all), but when you have 2-3 enemies hitting you at once, they generally take me down really quickly no matter what class I play.....can't dodge 2-3 attacks per second when you only get 1 dodge every 5-10 seconds. I just don't understand why dodge plays such a huge roll in damage reduction while armor does not (at least not in my experience). I'm tempted to build a tanky warrior just so I don't leave town in my paper armor.

I don't either.....it just seems like I take way too much damage. I can only dodge twice without waiting for endurance, which is no problem against 1 enemy (them taking me down 1v1 to the amounts I listed was just facetanking them, not with dodging and all), but when you have 2-3 enemies hitting you at once, they generally take me down really quickly no matter what class I play.....can't dodge 2-3 attacks per second when you only get 1 dodge every 5-10 seconds. I just don't understand why dodge plays such a huge roll in damage reduction while armor does not (at least not in my experience). I'm tempted to build a tanky warrior just so I don't leave town in my paper armor.

I had a slightly different experience with melee today. I played a warrior for a bit and never had to use my heal once through the entire starting tutorial. Last time I did the same thing and had to use it fairly often. I don't know if I've just gotten more used to the game mechanics or if they've actually adjusted the mitigation of heavy armor though.

I wish they would release patch notes between the betas and stress tests. :s

So... tomorrow?

"We will be conducting a Stress Test on Friday, August 10 from 4:00 PM PACIFIC Time to 8:00 PM PACIFIC Time."

Interesting that they are doing another one back to back. They must not have nailed down what they were after today.

I wish they would release patch notes between the betas and stress tests. :s

Interesting that they are doing another one back to back. They must not have nailed down what they were after today.

If they did that, they'd be wasting so much time given how much stuff they're updating... :pinch:

This was the message they left on Facebook:

REMEMBER: We will be actively working on the game during the event, so you might experience connectivity problems or discover features that are not working as designed. Any issues you experience are a result of the rigorous conditions of the stress test, and are in no way representative of the state of the game at launch. By participating in this stress test, you?re helping us make Guild Wars 2 a better game. Thanks for your cooperation?we?ll see you in-game!

Additional notes:

* Stress Tests are open to those who have PRE-PURCHASED the game.

* Characters will not be wiped for tomorrow's Stress Test.

---

Looks like they aren't screwing around at all. It's cool seeing how hard they're working in preparation to all this. I really hope all their work results in a great payoff. No MMO has had a smooth launch really, so it'd really be interesting to see if they could pull it off. If not, I'll forgive them still but it'd be a pretty damn awesome feat to pull off. :D

If they did that, they'd be wasting so much time given how much stuff they're updating... :pinch:

I really doubt. I'm sure they have a list of things they change from day to day. It wouldn't take much for them to have an intern summarize the notes once a week.

I really doubt. I'm sure they have a list of things they change from day to day. It wouldn't take much for them to have an intern summarize the notes once a week.

Except they're making so many changes on a day to day basis, it'd be downright annoying. Hell, they've made updates during the BWEs and stress tests while they're live. I'd rather them just stay focused with it all and worry about notifying us about updates once they're actually live.

Speaking of which, how often did they update people on Guild Wars? I recall just seeing updates as you loaded to certain zones, but I don't recall if they listed all the changes on their site back then.

So... tomorrow?

"We will be conducting a Stress Test on Friday, August 10 from 4:00 PM PACIFIC Time to 8:00 PM PACIFIC Time."

Oh one I may actually get to participate in.

Except they're making so many changes on a day to day basis, it'd be downright annoying. Hell, they've made updates during the BWEs and stress tests while they're live. I'd rather them just stay focused with it all and worry about notifying us about updates once they're actually live.

Speaking of which, how often did they update people on Guild Wars? I recall just seeing updates as you loaded to certain zones, but I don't recall if they listed all the changes on their site back then.

I really doubt that they would have to go out of their way to create a short list summarizing the changes they make. They have to have a list anyways because they can't just change things randomly. It's all got to be documented somehow. Having one unimportant employee take an hour every week to summarize (not a full detailed change log) wouldn't require much on their part. The only reason I can think of that they wouldn't put out a change log at this point is because they are making changes to things they don't want people to know about before the launch of the game, and I can understand that I guess.

Still, my point was that it would be nice to know if they did in fact change things like armor mitigation so we can do more than speculate. Mostly I just want to know about the balance changes.

And the downloading between zones in GW1 was because you didn't have everything downloaded for your game. It downloads files as you go. If you wanted to you could start playing Guild Wars 1 after only downloading relatively little files. You'd just have to download the content of each new area as you progressed. When GW1 first came out I had a friend who was still sadly on a 56k modem and we experienced that quite a few times. It was even more common when they have their annual holiday events as well, because those made a lot of changes to zones for those events.

If you want to get 100% of the game files downloaded you need to put "-image" in the target area of the properties for the shortcut to your game. That works for GW2, as well.

It's definitely at a better time for you Americans this time around, very late for us (not that I'm complaining :laugh:). Glad to see them working hard trying to make improvements before the early start/launch as well. Personally, I only want to check out the crafting system during these stress tests now and try to figure out the most efficient use of resources.

Except they're making so many changes on a day to day basis, it'd be downright annoying. Hell, they've made updates during the BWEs and stress tests while they're live. I'd rather them just stay focused with it all and worry about notifying us about updates once they're actually live.

Speaking of which, how often did they update people on Guild Wars? I recall just seeing updates as you loaded to certain zones, but I don't recall if they listed all the changes on their site back then.

They did have the change log on the Guild Wars site and on the wiki that you could look through to see what they had changed but it would usually take a couple of hours to a few days to get that information posted up, that being said, there were small updates being done every couple of days back from what I remember. (And I mean Client changes when you launch, not the files downloaded during zone changing/loading)

As seen here: http://www.guildwars...tes/default.php

I imagine they will do the same for Guild Wars 2, as you say, they need documentation to show the changes otherwise people will start to complain about "ninja nerfs". :rofl:

- Alera :shiftyninja:

I really doubt that they would have to go out of their way to create a short list summarizing the changes they make. They have to have a list anyways because they can't just change things randomly. It's all got to be documented somehow. Having one unimportant employee take an hour every week to summarize (not a full detailed change log) wouldn't require much on their part. The only reason I can think of that they wouldn't put out a change log at this point is because they are making changes to things they don't want people to know about before the launch of the game, and I can understand that I guess.

Still, my point was that it would be nice to know if they did in fact change things like armor mitigation so we can do more than speculate. Mostly I just want to know about the balance changes.

And the downloading between zones in GW1 was because you didn't have everything downloaded for your game. It downloads files as you go. If you wanted to you could start playing Guild Wars 1 after only downloading relatively little files. You'd just have to download the content of each new area as you progressed. When GW1 first came out I had a friend who was still sadly on a 56k modem and we experienced that quite a few times. It was even more common when they have their annual holiday events as well, because those made a lot of changes to zones for those events.

If you want to get 100% of the game files downloaded you need to put "-image" in the target area of the properties for the shortcut to your game. That works for GW2, as well.

I guess man. Blizzard was having issues alone keeping up with their change logs for their betas. I'm not saying they don't have them, but to compile a list from what each developer has modified into a clear and concise format for the community to read with changes that will likely be irrelevant as soon as they're out the door is what I'm talking about. It'd just be an utter waste of time really, and judging by the pace of things at Arenanet, I don't blame them in the least.

I guess man. Blizzard was having issues alone keeping up with their change logs for their betas. I'm not saying they don't have them, but to compile a list from what each developer has modified into a clear and concise format for the community to read with changes that will likely be irrelevant as soon as they're out the door is what I'm talking about. It'd just be an utter waste of time really, and judging by the pace of things at Arenanet, I don't blame them in the least.

I understand that, but I wasn't suggesting they detail every single change they made. Just a short summary like "adjusted heavy armor damage mitigation(speculation)" and "added functionality to the minimap and changed its design". Things like that, I don't think it would be to hard to do and would cut down on a lot of speculation so people could actually say for certain if something is better or worse or just their imagination.

If you didn't know better you would never know that for example, they disabled the ability to resize the UI in bwe3 and the last 2 stress tests because it was causing issues. The only reason you would know something was up with it is if you tried to use the resize option and found out that it didn't work no matter what size you set it to.

On the other hand the stress tests aren't about getting feedback, so I suppose you have a point there.

I had a slightly different experience with melee today. I played a warrior for a bit and never had to use my heal once through the entire starting tutorial. Last time I did the same thing and had to use it fairly often. I don't know if I've just gotten more used to the game mechanics or if they've actually adjusted the mitigation of heavy armor though.

I don't know....maybe it's because you haven't gotten many levels? Warrior was ez mode up until around 10 (currently at 12), only had to use my heal once or twice. But now it seems if I fight more than 1 enemy at a time I need to really pay attention and sometimes use my heal.

In open area's, thief with a shortbow has much higher survivability than I've ever had on my warrior (though I haven't played Rifle/longbow warrior much), and in melee, warrior feels just as squishy as my thief.

I can't say much though, my highest level is 13 or so, and I really need to get some of the traits raised up a bit (swiftness, might and endurance gain on dodge as a thief? Yes please) before I can judge them.....but so far I don't feel like any of the melee primary classes (most notably warrior and thief, as I do not like guardian) are tanky enough to fight in melee against normal enemies. Also, the level scaling can get kind of annoying.....if you are travelling somewhere you have to be careful about what you run through because it might kick your butt due to the level down scaling. I like the concept, I just think it makes it too much of a hassle to travel around and enjoy the scenery that you missed at a low level.

I don't know....maybe it's because you haven't gotten many levels? Warrior was ez mode up until around 10 (currently at 12), only had to use my heal once or twice. But now it seems if I fight more than 1 enemy at a time I need to really pay attention and sometimes use my heal.

In open area's, thief with a shortbow has much higher survivability than I've ever had on my warrior (though I haven't played Rifle/longbow warrior much), and in melee, warrior feels just as squishy as my thief.

I can't say much though, my highest level is 13 or so, and I really need to get some of the traits raised up a bit (swiftness, might and endurance gain on dodge as a thief? Yes please) before I can judge them.....but so far I don't feel like any of the melee primary classes (most notably warrior and thief, as I do not like guardian) are tanky enough to fight in melee against normal enemies. Also, the level scaling can get kind of annoying.....if you are travelling somewhere you have to be careful about what you run through because it might kick your butt due to the level down scaling. I like the concept, I just think it makes it too much of a hassle to travel around and enjoy the scenery that you missed at a low level.

In bwe1 it was the exact opposite. I got my warrior to level 18 in that event and it got easier to kill and survive as I got higher. He was extremely squishy in de's where more than 5 or 6 other people were present.

But like I said, since we have no patch notes I don't know if that's just my perception or if they have actually adjusted armor damage mitigation or they have balanced mob damage in dynamic events.

I wish they would release patch notes between the betas and stress tests. :s

I've wanted this for so long. Given there can be anywhere from 100-250 new revisions(i've been keeping track) between most events it's kinda annoying not having any idea what they've changed between events outside of the utterly obvious things.

Has anyone check this?

http://guildwars2.pl/signatures,a657

Not bad, might use this so I actually have a signature.....though I don't think I want my character names that easily findable (my GW1 account got hacked awhile ago.....after they started requiring character names to log in, and I only had my character names in a small number of places). It's a shame it auto-formats the name you input to something that would actually work in GW2....tried putting in [REDACTED] as a way to hide the name field, but it reformatted it as: Redacted Probably won't use it, but I like the customization the generator offers.

Speaking of security. I find it odd that they are only requiring a password to log into the game when they had issues with that in GW1. They made it so we had to know a characters name on the account to log into it.

Maybe that will change at launch?

I'm fairly certain they'll add in the character thing after a week or two. Kinda hard to do on launch when no one has any characters :p There's also a more serious point about how some players who use random names for characters don't necessarily remember them properly until they've spent a fair chunk of time playing with them.

I'm fairly certain they'll add in the character thing after a week or two. Kinda hard to do on launch when no one has any characters :p There's also a more serious point about how some players who use random names for characters don't necessarily remember them properly until they've spent a fair chunk of time playing with them.

Nah, just run a check, if the account has no characters, do not require a character name. Otherwise, how would people just buying the game 3 months from now log in for the first time when their account has no characters?

As far as security goes, I hope they add the security token option, similar to what Blizzard has available. I like the fact that even if someone knows my password, they won't get in without my security token.

The character method is nice and all, but if someone got into Arenanet servers they would have all your character names and encrypted password. With security tokens they would get your token seed, but wouldn't know exactly how the security token values are calculated (unless they also got a hold of the authentication servers and reverse engineered the login methods that contain the token calculations).

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This mainly affects apps that create a Start menu folder with multiple shortcuts. [Taskbar] This update improves notification badge display across your apps. Notification counts and badge visuals now update correctly, helping you stay up to date with new activity. Up next we have build 28000.2333: Gradual rollout Windows 11 PC experiences This section highlights some new features and enhancements for Windows 11 PCs, including AI-powered capabilities, continuous innovation, and performance improvements. [Magnifier in Windows] New! Magnifier now provides clearer and more consistent announcements when working with a screen reader. You'll hear helpful announcements when you zoom in or out, switch views, turn color inversion on or off, or turn Magnifier On or Off. This makes it easy to stay oriented while you work. New! Magnifier now supports magnification of permitted protected content. This update improves smoothness when moving Magnifier in lens mode. [Task Manager] New! Task Manager now offers improved visibility into NPU usage on PCs with an NPU. New optional NPU and NPU Engine columns are available on the Processes, Users, and Details pages, along with NPU Dedicated Memory and NPU Shared Memory optional columns on the Details page. Neural engines that are part of a GPU now appear on the Performance page, providing a more complete view of AI-related activity. A new optional Isolation column on the Processes and Details pages shows which apps are running in an AppContainer. You can add any of the new columns by right-clicking a column header in Task Manager and selecting them from the menu. This update improves CPU speed display on the Performance page of Task Manager for VMs, so it doesn't show higher than unexpected numbers after resuming from hibernate. [Camera] New! Windows 11's Multi-App Camera feature allows multiple applications to access your camera stream at the same time. Basic Camera mode in Windows 11 enables simplified camera functionality, useful for troubleshooting or improving stability when your camera is not working correctly. Enterprise admin can now set Multi-App Camera mode or Basic Camera mode through Group Policy, under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Camera > Configure Camera Options. [Windows Setup] New! You can now choose a custom name for your user folder on the Device Name page during Windows setup. The updated experience makes it easier to select a custom name during setup only. If this step is skipped, Windows uses the default folder name and continues setup as usual. User folder names must follow standard Windows naming requirements. [General Performance] This update accelerates app launch and core shell experiences such as Start menu, Search, and Action Center. [Personalization] This update improves: Color selection accuracy when adjusting your accent color to match your wallpaper when the automatic accent color selection is enabled in Personalization settings. Wallpaper persistence reliability across restarts and upgrades, including better support for large-resolution wallpapers and other scenarios to prevent solid color wallpaper fallback. [Windows Hello] This update improves: This update optimizes the Windows Biometric service (WinBio) to help improve performance when your device resumes from Modern Standby. This update reduces unexpected authentication blocks in Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security by resolving missing secure enrollment metadata. This update improves sign-in behavior on the lock screen and sign-in screen. When Windows Hello face or fingerprint is set up and available, it is now the default sign-in method every time you sign in, even if you used a different method previously. If you need to use your Windows PIN instead and use it three times in a row, Windows will stay with PIN until you switch to another sign-in method. [Windows Search Box] Windows Search will now find and prioritize files with as few as two characters. [Storage] The dialog box for creating a Dev Drive now supports specifying the size in gigabytes (GB) instead of only megabytes (MB). This option is also available when resizing volumes in Settings > System > Storage. In Settings > System > Storage, you now see a User Account Control (UAC) prompt only when you choose to view temporary files, instead of immediately when opening the page. [USB] This update improves reliability for displays attached to USB4 docks and hubs. These displays now light up more consistently, particularly when coming out of standby. The USB3 stack is updated to have additional resiliency and recovery measures in place against certain unexpected hardware faults and conditions. Users will experience higher reliability with USB devices. [Sensors] This update improves resiliency against apps that could keep the sensor hub powered on and drain power, impacting battery life. [Human Interface Device (HID)] This update improves battery life related to the HID and Input stack for failed HID devices. Power hygiene is also improved against applications that might initiate HID transfers during standby. [Input] The update improves: Reliability of the touch keyboard on the sign-in screen, including when entering or changing a password. Reliability of explorer.exe when closing the input switcher. Performance when opening or navigating to clipboard history. [Fonts] The Times New Roman font family is updated to improve the rendering of combining diacritical marks across Greek and Cyrillic scripts. This update provides more accurate and visually consistent text by addressing mark positioning issues. These changes improve readability, reduce rendering inconsistencies, and better support global language users working with Greek and Cyrillic content. [Task Scheduler] Task Scheduler now saves column width adjustments in task list view across sessions. [Desktop icons] This update improves reliability of loading desktop app shortcuts. [Microsoft Store] This update includes underlying changes that improve download performance and bandwidth usage. This update improves error reporting when downloads fail due to Windows Update group policy settings being enabled. [Reliability] This update improves Windows reliability on the sign-in and lock screens, in File Explorer, when using touch gestures on touchscreen devices, and when changing themes in Settings. Normal rollout This non-security update includes quality improvements. The following summary outlines key issues addressed by the KB update after you install it. Also, included are available new features. The bold text within the brackets indicates the item or area of the change. [Authentication] This update improves Netlogon secure channel connections between domain controllers, enabling successful connections from member servers to domain controllers set up before 2025. [BitLocker] This update improves BitLocker testing reliability by ensuring the required files are available for the BitLocker Drive Encryption USB BIOS Logo Test. You can find the blog post for builds 26100.8728/26200.8728 here and build 28000.2333 here.
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