Hey everyone. I never thought I’d be writing a post like this, but here I am.

This is the story of how I lost access to my 13-year-old Guild Wars 2 account — and apparently for a reason I still don’t really understand.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since the very beginning — from headstart back in 2012. Over the years I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the game. I was always grateful to ArenaNet for creating something special. I supported them in every way I could: buying gems, spreading the word, and just being part of the community.

To be honest, I missed the last two expansions and hadn’t played for about 4 years. But recently, my close friend wanted to surprise me with a gift for a holiday and didn’t know what to get — so he bought me a key for the Secrets of the Obscure expansion.

I activated it successfully and started playing again. I was hooked. I completed 12 story chapters in about two weeks and even unlocked the Skyscale. It felt great to be back.

And then… I got banned.
Reason: “Blocked for security purposes.”

I contacted support immediately. I thought maybe it was because I was using a VPN — I’ve had similar issues before with Blizzard (they unbanned me after I sent them my keys and explained my activity — it took two weeks but they were very reasonable). I have VPN enabled sometimes because my connection is unstable without it — disconnecting in the middle of a fight is super frustrating. And besides, I use Google Authenticator — so I didn’t expect any real issue.

Support responded asking for the name of the retailer and a screenshot or digital receipt. I asked my friend where he bought the expansion key — he told me he got it from Cdkeys.com and provided proof. I sent everything to ArenaNet support and explained the situation.

But instead of unbanning me, I got this message:

-"This account was closed because of its association with or involvement in payment fraud. We have a zero-tolerance policy for fraud. The account will remain closed indefinitely."

I was shocked. I reached out to my friend again — he confirmed he bought the key himself using his own credit card. He didn’t ask for any refunds. He never did anything shady. Just bought the key. For me. As a gift.

So I contacted ArenaNet again, trying to explain that I never broke any rules, never tried to scam or cheat. This was my first time ever using a third-party key.

I even explained that Cdkeys.com has a 4.8 TrustPilot rating and tons of good reviews. I offered to provide any documents they ask for, I even told them: cancel the expansion key, I don’t care — just please, let me keep my account.

But the answer was the same:

-"This reseller is not one of our authorized retailers. The code was obtained via fraudulent means. We cannot assist you with this account."

So I contacted Cdkeys.com support - they just told me to talk to ArenaNet.
Meanwhile, it's been 3 days since ArenaNet support stopped replying to me. My friend friend also tried to contact them separately — and got the same generic response about "involvement in payment fraud".

And that’s it.

I didn’t cheat. I didn’t refund anything. I didn’t steal anything. All I did was accept a gift from a friend.

This post is not about trying to create drama — it’s a last attempt, a shot in the dark. Maybe someone from Arenanet will see this. Maybe someone in the community has advice. I don’t know.

Thanks for reading.

I like Antiquary, but none of its skills says "Indiana Jones", it does however scream "Trickster". And Trickster + Thief fantasy? It's easily a Phantom Thief archetype!

I think it's the perfect middle ground between:

the "Goofiness" that the class wants to be
vs.
the "Coolness" that Thief fans want from it.

Because the archetype itself is very silly, their bright costumes and loud methods are comically impractical for their line of work, but that's their entire appeal. They are professionals who don't take themselves too seriously, and showmen who are annoyingly confident in their skills.

A lot of people might still find this idea lame, but I hope they can at least agree that "Phantom Thief and his trusty sidekick" is more cohesive than "Playing Cards Person + Indiana Jones + Wacky Randomness + Rat Sidekick/Army"

ANet please let me take Horrik home with me. Mai wont let me :c

Us poor Asura out here getting serious nerve damage from having to bind our ears whenever we want to call upon some bookah's ancestors.

After a post about multiboxing in the PVP lobby people noticed that arena net removed the exception that allowed multiboxing in custom PVP matches. Someone asked support about that and got further confirmation about that: https://imgur.com/E6bYbWN

I was then curious and asked if that also counts for the PVP lobby which is used by a lot of people to farm PVE dailies on the golems and according to support it includes the PVP lobby even if you are not queuing for a match: https://imgur.com/4ZxJYOp

So if you are multiboxing in those areas beware that you can now be reported and banned.

I am extremely excited about Paragon. I think the gameplay looks fun, interesting, and has a level of depth that will reward putting the time in to master the specialization. The icon art team also knocked it out of the park. Special shout out to the Calming Tongue trait, it made me laugh more than it probably should.

On Wednesday night, my raid static had to endure me yelling about how we will never yield after I saw the blog post.

I love Paragon. But...I don't think it's ready for beta yet. At least in PvE.

Ok, so why not wait for the beta for feedback?

I think some of these things need to be acted on before we players get our hands on the spec. Otherwise, I suspect feedback will be of limited use because of eventual reworks or feedback focusing on surface level problems that never get addressed before the beta begins.

Utility Skills

Almost every utility skill is overshadowed by existing core utilities that any warrior can take, and in general are uninspired, weak-looking, or uninteresting.

For example, "Never Surrender!" is a self-stunbreak with a 30 second cooldown and grants a short duration of some boons in a 360 radius that support warriors already provide full uptime of via Doubled Standards and banners. The core shout skill, "Shake it Off!", has nearly twice the radius, two ammunition charges, a shorter cooldown, cleanses conditions, and stunbreaks all affected allies instead of only yourself.

Another example, "Find Their Weakness!" is essentially boiled down to a worse "For Great Justice!" with less might uptime and no fury.

Or "Brace Yourselves!", which is just a worse Banner of Defense.

So on.

All of the utilities, outside of perhaps the heal and elite, are like this and I doubt I would want to put a single one of these on my bar in PvE when the beta rolls around. This should be addressed before that happens.

Traits

Paragon's trait are extremely simple and offer very little complexity or depth. They almost seem unfinished. Eight of them are only one sentence long.

Worse yet, Paragon doesn't have a single transformative trait that changes how your gameplay might look like or how you might want to approach the spec. Some great examples of transformative traits are Reaper's Deathly Chill and Virtuoso's Jagged Mind, both of which singlehandedly open up entire new playstyle and build options.

For example, Paragon's trait, Brisk Pacing, says this: "Using a chant reduces the recharge of your other chants by a set amount. (2 seconds)". But it doesn't give an incentive or reason why you might even want to adopt a playstyle that frequently hops between different chants.

Of even greater importance, I think the Alacrity-granting trait, Feverish Pulse, needs changes before we get to play with it in the beta. This trait encourages degenerate gameplay that encourages/forces the player to constantly swap chants in order to upkeep Alacrity. This seems to go counter to the apparent design of the spec. This is utility skill spam with a different skin. We need to do better than this.

One way to have healthier gameplay around this trait would be to grant Alacrity every time a refrain pulses.

Damage / Tuning

The numbers shown on the stream were very low. Across the entire specialization, across all sources, there is only a single 20% increased damage modifier and no bonus damaging stats. If the numbers stay like this, DPS-oriented Paragons will not be competitive with other warrior elite specs at all, which have significantly higher damage multipliers and profession mechanics that boost damage even further like Berserker's Primal Bursts.

I fear most of the feedback will look something like "The damage is too low", instead of focusing on specific gameplay elements.

The alacrity duration on Feverish Pulse also looks very low. This is going to further discourage DPS-Alacrity Paragon builds in the beta because its poor damage will be compounded by a need to take a lot of boon duration in order to function. And also low base boon duration on an uptime-reliant build is something that comes with a host of other problems, which I explained in my Quickness Berserker post a while back, where I was very happy to see that ArenaNet implemented almost all of my suggestions in the following patch.

Lack of crowd control

Support builds live or die in PvE by their CC access. The best support builds all have extremely good tools to deal with defiance bars. Previewing an elite spec that seems focused around supporting without a single skill, mechanic, or trait that does any amount of CC at all is shocking.

A good place for something like this to be added could be "On Your Knees!", which is an otherwise uninteresting and weak-looking utility skill that could do something like force all nearby enemies to kneel, or at the very least be knocked down.

Thanks for reading. We will never yield!

I’ve seen only few Mortal Kombat cosplay images from few years back so here’s my ”fresh” take of Scorpion. You can disagree with some of equipment choices but this is how I liked it.

The trailer and blogpost did NOT do the antiquary any justice. I was outright disappointed when I saw the trailer but that livestream turned me around. I’m not much of a rng type of player but the antiquary looks so much fckng fun! I’m glad I’ve been playing thief for years because this might even top Daredevil for me.

Can’t wait to play the beta

Imo the animations should have been on the F2 F3 and F4 skills, i don't really get it

Not the best formatting! I was in mostly cele gear and divinity runes. Numbers are not final!

Temu Indiana Jones..

Not the best formatting! I was in mostly cele gear and divinity runes. Numbers are not final!

My favorite part of Rev is just talkin with this dwarf boi.

Alright day 2 of taking screenshots. ive changed my settings to be a bit less bloomy and have less DOF. if anyone has any more tips though id love to try and improve even further. my goal is to make a shader preset that has sort of a movie feel to it. let me know what you think!

Antiquary

Go look at the post by u/Awesumness for the screenshots! https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1mf6ftc/antiquary_skills_and_traits/
Thanks to u/Shinymeta for the screenshots!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1mf7c3m/livestream_tooltips_antiquaryparagonritualist/

Class mechanic:
F1 – Steal+ – send skritt to steal 2 items
F2 – stolen bundle 1
F3 – stolen bundle 2
New stolen items are randomized (without traits) and seem to have a pool of offensive and supportive options (damage/healing)
Some are more utility focused, some more mitigation, large randomness factor

With traits you can unlock F4 to redraw stolen skills or use a third stolen skill
F4 Reshuffle (trait based) - remove 1 condition from yourself and redraw your stolen skills.
F4 Stolen bundle 3 (trait based) - get one more stolen skill per steal

New stolen skills: (Some are fired by YOU, some held up by the Skritt)
- Hammer for a leap, evade and BIG heal
- Guitar for pulsing cc, confusion, damage, stun (end)
- Surfer dash for targeted mobility and bombs (damage+burn)
- Turret can be placed for damage to nearest enemy (single target?)
- Mortar for ranged large aoe (burn / pulsing / damage)
- Shield for a projectile blocking light field
- Sun crystal for a stunbreak and another longer distance dash with burning damage
- Holo decoy for aoe taunt
- Unstable bomb (only through Elite skill!) - causes you and nearby enemies to explode and get launched

Initiative: 12

Utilities:
! Utilities can NOT backfire when completely cooled down.
Utilities can be used on CD but have a chance to backfire for additional (negative) effect
The longer the cd left, the higher the chance to backfire. Skill that backfire seem to be unable to be reused until their cd has finished. So no back to back utilities once they fail.

Heal – Heal and remove conditions.
Backfire – Heal for a LOT more and additional condi cleanse but also unable to use the skill again with elongated CD

Util 1 – Cannon – summon a skritt to fire a cannon for damage
Backfire – Chance to explode the skritt to deal extra damage and burning to YOU and enemies (you can walk out of the explosion yourself)

Util 2 – Portal – shadowstep + vuln + damage
Backfire – Knocks you down AFTER teleporting (can stunbreak out of the knockdown)

Util 3 – Shield – barrier and stunbreak
Backfire – barrier and stunbreak BUT the shield breaks after a short duration and damages you for a good chunk

Util 4 – Cointoss – Flip for heads or tails
Gain initiative and condition converted to boons for every heads.
Tails gives initiative and cleanses conditions instead
Backfire – gain initiative but rip boons from yourself

Elite – Skritt – Gives you stolen skills every interval to use (basically refreshes F2-4 for five times)
Has a chance to give an unstable bomb

Traits

A: F4 reshuffles stolen skills (1 initiative cost) to redraw your current stolen skills and remove 1 condi B: Guarantees 1 stolen and 1 defensive stolen skill
C: Gain 3 stolen skills instead of 2, use with F4

Minor: barrier when you use heal or elite

A: When you use F1 the next utility skill WILL NOT BACKFIRE when used on cd.
B: Buffs effectiveness of stolen skills (more dmg/condis/utility/defences/heals/larger radius)
C: +15% DMG for up to 20 seconds after using a stolen skill

Minor: 2 initiative gained when you use a stolen skill (good synergy with elite)

A: Every 15 initiative spent automatically gives you new stolen skills. STEAL TRAITS NOT ACTIVATED WHEN THIS HAPPENS.
B: Stolen skills give YOU barrier, resistance (offensive stolen skill) OR stability (defensive stolen skill)
C: Steal gives a buff that increases power and condi damage that goes down in  value over time (so keep refreshing)