We’re rolling out our first set of optimizations. This is the first in many steps involved in helping resolve issues with “skill lag.” Some players will experience a slight improvement in skill lag issues with large groups of players, while some players may also experience a slight raise in their FPS.

The Young Karkas have significant HP, have a rapid fire attack which will practically instakill you if you're not paying 100% attention to their pattern, and you will encounter them in packs of 2-5.

The Veteran and Champion Karkas have two health bars. When you deplete the first, their armour pops off and you have to kill their second bar. While they have their armour, they have a rolling attack which will fuck you the hell up.

The opening event had hundreds of players basically fighting wave after wave of veteran and champion karkas with young karka adds. You'd see large swathes of dozens of players just get flattened by the god damned things. Then you had the Ancient Karka which had a bajillion trillion HP and spawned Veterans as adds...

It was kinda fun if you could get past the lag. I managed to do the event on an overflow that had a smaller pop than the regular servers, and it made the experience so much better. You still go flattened, but actually stood a chance of seeing the attacks coming.

For a 4-second channel, 10 supply, badges, and karma? Oh, and as a trap I would expect it to be easily interruptable; the skill being put on cooldown if you take damage while trying to use it. So... yea, a reasonable tradeoff.

I'd expect to see it defending choke points against mesmers, to defeat perma-stealth thieves inside enemy towers/keeps, and just about nowhere else (once the initial novelty has worn off).

I feel like there's a disproportionate number of thieves running around WvW right now. Perhaps there will be people who are too frustrated by what you mentioned and as they try out other professions maybe we'll see something closer to a "good" number of thieves, which is not too many not too few :) If that makes sense.

No other class can be shut down as hard as this, for 30 seconds at a time? Absolutely asinine.

If I put Temporal Curtain on top of a Ranger and then when he moves put my Warden on him, and then when he moves put my Feedback on him, I don't know how long that is in seconds, but it's pretty much a wrap if he doesn't run away.

In wvw, my main is thief and this is a complication but definately not a death sentence. We have had an easy eaaaasy easy life in the borderlands due to our ability to disengage.

Withdraw, shadowstep, bow shadowstep are our salvation. Don't blow all your initiative if you step on a trap. Adapt, adapt, adapt. If somebody seems glued to a spot, don't blow ur backstab combo. Pester them with the bow which can hit like a truck if they aren't willing to move.

Yes, this trap creates some quality of life issues. The bp/hs crowd have pissed off the nerf gods. Heck they irritate me as well, so I'm excited to drop one of these traps down in my next shadow refuge(assuming I didn't step on a trap).

Agreed, it will require some slight adjustments in playstyle like taking wide swings around high traffic areas, but that is what a stealth/burst dps class should have to do. The cost is high enough that these things aren't gonna be all over the map, so I'd bet most of the time it won't even be an issue. The other traps are much more useful from group standpoint.

Depends on the situation. I'd set up anti stealth traps between my teams siege and the wall of enemies when fighting a keep or a tower from long range. This would prevent Mesmers from sneaking up to you with a portal as often. I would also place them around supply camps.

Anti supply traps would go in areas that people would tend to attack with siege. Honestly, I would place one just behind the outer door of a keep if they're knocking. They bust the door, run through as a huge group, and lose a ton of supply, so suddenly attacking inner becomes much tougher.

If a big zerg overruns a camp, I might try and place an anti supply trap at the exit, just to spite them, too.

I don't think they work that way. I think they hit the first twenty people to step on them, so one person would just put the counter down to 19. I guess that one person could warn everyone else though.

LIVING WORLD
The Secret of Southsun
The refugees from Flame & Frost who were resettled at Southsun Cove are up in arms over the restrictive residency contracts that prevent them from leaving. Tensions are high, and settlers are brawling with Consortium guards. What’s worse, the island’s local wildlife has been agitated and is even more aggressive and territorial than usual.
The Lionguard’s Inspector Kiel has been charged with quelling the violence so it doesn’t interfere with the upcoming Dragon Bash festival in Lion’s Arch. Kiel takes her job seriously, so she’ll need help from players and Researcher Levvi to keep everyone on the island safe from the local wildlife and each other.

Southsun Cove

The Consortium has created a new exotic resort for those looking to get away for a while. Lord Faren and Lady Kasmeer are currently there on vacation.

New settlements have been created for refugees coming in from Lion’s Arch.
Animals on Southsun Cove are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Settlers and tourists have wandered too far from the camps and need assistance getting back to safety.
Researcher Levvi is looking for brave adventurers to help survey the island and recover samples to determine the cause of the native creatures’ increased aggression.

Tensions between settlers and Consortium members have led to confrontation that may require mediation.
The new Crab Toss activity is now available at Sawtooth Bay in Southsun Cove. Players can win karka shells, passiflora, tonics, and more.

Southsun Supply Crates will drop rarely from creatures during the Secret of Southsun event. These crates contain Southsun crafting materials and a chance at a wide variety of items, such as shoulder skins, new boosts and convenience items, and a rare chance at new weapon skins and minis. Southsun Supply Crates can also be purchased from the Black Lion Trading Company (see below for more info).

Blooming Passiflora are now growing on the island.
The larger veteran and champion karka now have a guaranteed drop chance for karka shells upon defeat.
All players who enter the island for the duration of the event are scaled up to level 80. This content is available from May 14 to June 11.

Players who complete 25 of the Secret of Southsun achievements will earn the “Southsun Stalwart” meta-achievement. This achievement awards players with a Sclerite Karka Shell back item and the title of “Southsun Stalwart.” The Southsun Stalwart meta-achievement covers the entire event’s content, some of which is not accessible until the next release.

A new title, “Crab Toss Champion,” has been added for players who win a game of Crab Toss.

A new title, “Crabgrabber,” has been added for players who steal 100 crabs during games of Crab Toss.

Obsidian Sanctum, the jumping puzzle in the Eternal Battlegrounds, has been moved to its own WvW map.
Entering the puzzle will take players out of the Eternal Battlegrounds.
Leaving will take players back to Lion’s Arch.

Added a new vendor: “Traps and Tricks Outfitter.”

Traps have been added as a new purchasable consumable utility item. Two unique variants are available.
When placed, traps last for one hour.
Players may only have one of a given trap type deployed at a time.
Traps will disappear when a player leaves the map.
Traps are sold by the vendor for 15 badges and 525 karma; they will stack to 250 and are account-bound.
It takes a 4-second channel to place at feet.
Placing a trap uses very short-range ground targeting to assist in orientation.
Placed traps have a 600×90 rectangular trigger area; only enemies can trigger them.
Once triggered, traps affect up to 20 enemies within a range of 1200.
Traps cost 10 supply to place.

Leg Specialist:
This trait will no longer function with the Burning Oil siege weapon in WvW.

Healing Signet:
Updated skill facts to show the passive effect and accurately display the healing value for the active effect.

Elementalist

Dragon’s Claw:
Fixed an exploit that caused this skill to fire at increased rates.

Engineer

Kit Refinement:
The cooldown icon will now display correctly when this trait is used with Flamethrower.

Elementalist

Shocking Aura:
This skill’s icon on the buff bar now displays the same icon as the skill itself.

Ranger

Fixed a bug that caused the projectile speed of the following axe skills to be 75% of their intended speed:
Ricochet
Splitblade
Winter’s Bite
Path of Scars

Juvenile Rainbow Jellyfish now uses a unique model.

BLACK LION TRADING COMPANY GEM STORE
New Items and Promotions

You can now purchase the Southsun Supply Crate in the Consumable category of the Gem Store for 1 for 150 gems or 10 for 1200 gems. These special crates contain Southsun crafting materials and a chance at items such as shoulder skins, new boosts and convenience items, and a rare chance at new weapon skins and minis. The Southsun Supply Crates will only be available until June 10. The Southsun Supply Crates will also be a limited-time rare drop off the creatures on the island during this time.

The Consortium Swim Speed Boost is now available in the Boost category of the Gem Store for 1 for 50 gems or 5 for 200 gems. This boost will increase your swim speed by 15% for 1 hour. This boost is not useable in PvP.

To celebrate spring, the Gem Store is making one miniature baby animal available each week for the month of May. This week’s adorable addition is the Mini Moa Chick, which is now available in the Minis category of the Gem Store for 400 gems each.

How to Dance, Volume 1 is now available in the Services category of the Gem Store for 400 gems. This book can be used to gain access to three different dance moves and a skill that will allow you to invite others to participate in your dance party.

While I appreciate the copy-paste, it would be better to paste each section as a reply to the previous section instead of a separate top-level comment. It ensures that the sections will not become reordered or separated by the whims of their vote score, and makes it easier for those not interested in the copy-paste to minimize it.

The Inquest Ornithologist has been upgraded to a champion, as befits her Group Event status.

And FFS, why? I'm getting really sick of this, it's already difficult enough to solo half of these events in Malchor and CS since the times I play the server's nearly dead, and even during "better hours" nobody's around doing the events in these zones since they don't award chests or thousands of karma an hour. Guess just toss another one on the pile of events I won't bother with...

I'm on Tarnished Coast, one of the more(if not most) active servers there is to my understanding. It doesn't change the fact that these zones are dead because their rewards are shit compared to doing other areas/events.

Maybe challenging if they had something like half or third health and double damage/more agressive attacks, but as it stands soloing a champ is a matter of learning a pattern and repeating it 50 times for the absurdly retarded health pool.

You can now purchase the Southsun Supply Crate in the Consumable category of the Gem Store for 1 for 150 gems or 10 for 1200 gems. These special crates contain Southsun crafting materials and a chance at items such as shoulder skins, new boosts and convenience items, and a rare chance at new weapon skins and minis. The Southsun Supply Crates will only be available until June 10. The Southsun Supply Crates will also be a limited-time rare drop off the creatures on the island during this time.

please, for the love of god tell me the endless axe or sickle aren't in there...

the molten pick was one of ANet's best selling items, it would suck more than ANYTHING THEY HAVE OR EVER WILL DO if they learned from that that we like endless stuff and therefore should put it behind RNG >_<

I hope they don't do unlimiteds of the others unless they're actually relevant. They were relevant here because the Dredge mine using pickaxes. Not sure when sickles and logging axes would be relevant in a Karka update...

Underwater isn't actually that bad, for the most part. The main problems are a slightly greater likelihood of mobs resetting and some trait setups just plain not working underwater, neither of which are actually a problem considering how the mob resetting thing has received patches and the only class that really needs traits to function, Mesmer, has an above-average underwater weapon set.

There's also the thing that underwater content is (with the exception of a single, very easy fractal) entirely open-world PvE, which isn't ever particularly difficult.

Granted, I use plague form on land or water (blind+poison+chill when traited? What is not to love?) I absolutely agree. If you're running an MM build, or you just like what the golem gets you, absolutely there should be some way to make use of it underwater.

I just can't deal with underwater combat, it fucks with my depth perception. The combat itself seems as well designed as it is on land, but I just can't fight there. I end up trying to melee things that are several meters away.

A one-month arc, but it seems that there will be a Part 2 to it? "The Southsun Stalwart meta-achievement covers the entire event’s content, some of which is not accessible until the next release." Sounds cool.

I think we are going to get a 2nd patch at the end of the month that will be more inline with what we have come accustom too. Reason I say that is there have been a few Dev posts over the last couple of weeks that said something along the lines of "...it wont be in the May 14th patch but we expect to have it in by the end of the month."

I think the WXP & PvE Culling changes will also be part of that patch.

They also referred to this patch as "the first May update", and there are some things for Southsun which were promised for the "Secrets of Southsun" but aren't in yet, like whatever bit of permanent content Robert Hrouda was working on for it.

What I mean is that there's no way to effectively trap against a zerg. Traps can only hit one or two people. There should be a way to trap or mine the heck out of a mountain pass to force zergs into a death trap.

I love this game - I truly do. But being I am still new and only lvl 29 - I am sad I will miss this event totally. was reading on it and getting hyped since it said you get leveled to 80 in the zone. Yeah.. died 5 times on single trash on the beach. Back to the empty zones to rush it to 80 I guess in case I miss more living storys. :-( Sorry - just had to vent. I do love this game though.

This zone has VERY challenging mobs. They have large HP pools, high damage, and unique mechanics that make them much harder than any other PvE monster (with exception of a few dungeon encounters). The skelk and young/hatchling karka are probably the only "easier" mobs on the island. The rest are by no means trash. Just run from them.

So do not feel bad, I encourage you to go back on Southsun and at least finish all your achievements (which can be done relatively safely, some spots are a bit tricky, but you can always ask for help in mapchat). Try to stick with people, who will be congregating around the achievement spots anyways. Or again, ask for help, the GW2 community is very nice.

I will give it another go tonight. I was really tired from work and lifting weights. Will try it again tonight. Just been used to my warrior roflstomping everything and need to take a diff approach to that area. Wife plays from time to time - I might grab her even if she is only lvl 30 as well and see what we can do as a duo.

Don't be discouraged, they can hurt exotic geared 80's too! It's of course much easier if you bring a friend along too, if no friends play you can ask on reddit or map chat, a lot of us are more than happy to run with strangers :3

However, this also means that you still need to get into EB to get to it then you lose your spot in EB. This is kind of dumb actually because now people will waste a spot in the queue and leave immediately. I mean, it moves the queue along, but I figured the point would be avoiding people entering EB for the puzzle in the first place?