Guild Wars 2

I think that things like necros wells or elses instant cast skills like arcanes should be changed (not nerfed) to where you have a chance to dodge or get out of the way. Thieves shadow refuge also doesn’t have many counters because there is so much stealth all you can do is wait. Obviously there are many other skills like moa etc.

More l2p , less QQ . you sound like you just want your hands held , Necro marks are fine the way they are and thieves shadow refuge does have a counter , knock the thief out before the house disappears and voila.

TheThiefMaster.3812:

More l2p , less QQ . you sound like you just want your hands held , Necro marks are fine the way they are and thieves shadow refuge does have a counter , knock the thief out before the house disappears and voila.

marks are fine? lmao

Necro marks are extremely hard to dodge unless your lucky. Sure mesmers can knock thieves out of refuge but not all the time. And try dodging an else burst without guessing…

Like… As hard as engis, warriors or other builds are to fight at least you can see what is going on. A grenade is coming at you? Dodge it. That eviscerate that will 1 shot you… You can at least block,blind or dodge

If you make the game based on having no instant casts/everything can be dodged then dodges on classes like thief, mesmer, ranger and guardian need to have hugely less dodges.

Demonts.4593:

Necro marks are extremely hard to dodge unless your lucky. Sure mesmers can knock thieves out of refuge but not all the time. And try dodging an else burst without guessing…

no they aren’t hard to dodge and you dont need luck to avoid them,the problem with marks is that you dont know what mark your dodging.
not only memsers can knock/pull thiefs out of refuge and you can aoe the refuge also so…
and why do you think you need to get to knock thiefs out of it all the time anyway?its a major cd for thiefs and can be easily counter as is you want more?
and you can avoid ele`s burst quite easily if you know what to look for.
so its l2p m8.
but i do agree with less instants (aoe ones mostly)

Just food for thought and trying to help out

Thing is, instant casts and fast casting skills are necessary for the fast paced type of combat in gw2. Most of the instant casts ( and I said most) are balanced around their advantages, and doesn’t bring effects as powerful as a 1 sec cast time skill for instance. It does make certain things harder to see, but upping cast times would make the fights less fun to watch, imho.

You do have a chance to dodge and get out of wells... They might have the cast cast animation as marks 2-4, but the big black thing on the ground is fairly easy to navigate out of. Although having unique animations would be nice. Arcanes... I can understand wanting them to have a cast time but I’m not terribly bothered by the lack thereof.

As for this discussion on shadow refuge, you lost when you said "all you can do is wait"... I promise you, if you genuinely believe that, after a lot more time spent PvPing and playing different classes (playing thief is the best way to learn about it and see how others will counter), you will reflect on that statement with a facepalm.

There’s:
1. Anticipate it, and disable them so they can’t cast it.
2. Get them out of the refuge with knockbacks, fears, or AoE they can’t survive.
3. "Oh you’re in stealth because you felt pressured or in trouble. I’ll wait for you to recover to comfortably resume." NO. They are obviously going to stay in there for 4 seconds and not attack! Perfect time to walk into it and swing your weapon around. Better yet, drop some AoEs on it.
4. Were they low health? Do you think after doing #2 that they went down? Then keep attacking the area!! Why on earth would you wait for them to revive themselves?!
5. They are in stealth. You can’t see your opponent. You are at a disadvantage. Why on earth would you simply wait for them to attack? If a predator were to hunt you and you couldn’t see it, would you stop and say "Oh darn, I can’t see you. You win, have me for lunch?" NO! MOVE! Don’t wait around! Enter stealth yourself if you can and or want to. Move around obstacles, use teleports to get away from the area or run away then teleport back after 6-7 seconds, estimate when they will attack and use invulnerability skills, blinding fields, evade skills, drop skills to snare and damage like traps marks (these will also indicate where the thief is when they are triggered), impassable walls, and or continue to rain AoE around yourself to at least damage them when they come to damage you. Remember while they are in stealth they can’t cap or decap a point, so you can leave it temporarily.
6. Dodge. It sounds daft, I know... You can’t dodge for 10 seconds, but you can count a few seconds then dodge, always move - don’t make yourself an easy target, especially if it’s a dagger thief, you might force them to attack you from the front because they can’t get to your back or side or you moved at the wrong moment for them - and doge again etc. When you see the "Evaded!" notice, you know roughly where they are! Act on that knowledge!
7. If you have Sigil of Fire, you can find where they are if it triggers because it will of course blast where the thief is and leave a black mark. This is helpful when trying to finish off a thief attempting to flee or revive themselves.

You want less instant cast things, and then immediately name some things that aren’t instant cast at all. Wat.jpg

Instead of complaining about instant cast skills, you need to realize that there are certain skills in the game that are more reliable than others at certain ranges (not necessarily at the max range that the skill provides) and this is intended by design – and they are balanced around this.

As an example, let’s look at Necromancer staff. It, and the necromancer in general, has the most reliable damage in the game. It has 1.2k range, no projectiles associated with their attacks, and aoe that a player can choose to place anywhere. If you see a necromancer wiffing their marks for no reason (by placing them on the ground instead of on top of people), that is a sign of a bad necro. On the negative side, most of their skills have a 3/4 cast time and all of the “good” marks have, at minimum, a 20 second recharge to them. Learn how to capitalize on that weakness and one part of necros becomes not too big of a deal.

Long story short. Yes there are more reliable sources of damage in the game than others, but realize this is by design as it creates strengths and weaknesses for classes. Not only this, but a general class is balanced within this concept of reliability. It also generates a certain “feel” for the class that is played.

As an example, let’s look at hammer from the guardian. 3 out of the 5 hammer skills provide some form of CC. They are very powerful cc when they land, but all of them have a long cast time. So fighting a hammer guardian 1 on 1 can be rather difficult for the hammer guardian to land any of his stuff. However, it can be a lot harder to spot the 1 second cast times on the guardian in the corner of your vision if you were trying to focus on killing one of his teammates. Thus making the skills of the hammer more reliable. This generates a feel for the playstyle of a guardian.

Is this to say that skills really don’t need to be looked at and the balance in the game is perfect? Of course not. However to say that instant cast spells are bad for the game, regardless of how it plays out, is ignoring the fact that the game is partially designed around this simple yet complex concept.

Just wanted to pop in and say a few things from the view of a less-than-expert player.
Ele burst is not very hard to time evades or blinds or blocks for. Burning Speed, for example, is a large portion of a D/D Ele’s damage and is one of the most telegraphed skills in the game.
Furthermore, OP’s request is already becoming a bit of a reality with skills like Corrupt Boon having a slightly increased cast time.

I believe stealth is ok, because if he is invisible you are capping the point. The broken build is the evade spam sw+dg not the heavy stealth one.

But I do agree that Moa should be reworked. You can dodge, yes you can but that doesn’t make a skill less op. Some people like to use the argument of “if you can dodge is not op” or “l2p” for everything. By the same logic they could give all classes an AoE 1shot skill with 1second cast time and it wouldnt be op becuase you can dodge it.

I have no problem with stealth… Its more of seeing what is coming at you than a skill having no cast time

When he said ele burst, i believe he meant fresh air burst, which is completely instant with no tell or anything to look for whatsoever that can hit for 4-8k thrown in with an instant blind. The only way youre not gonna get hit by it is random lucky dodges or a bad ele

Bhawb.7408:

You want less instant cast things, and then immediately name some things that aren’t instant cast at all. Wat.jpg

i think he also meant ranged skills with no tell or travel time i.e marks / scepter 2 and auto etc.

I also think they should try to add some element of counterplay to fresh air ele burst. They modified Skull Crack and Pin Down to give people a chance to see it coming and dodge I don’t see why they couldn’t try to do something similar for fresh air.

Sw+dagger evade spam will be nerfed at the class balance. Will still be viable but we wont see so many people running the build.

TheThiefMaster.3812:

More l2p , less QQ .

TheThiefMaster.3812:

More l2p , less QQ .

Counterplaying is a design concept that exists exactly to make a game more L2P-worthy, so using the L2P argument against counterplaying is often contradictory, and makes it hard to understand if your post was well thought or not (and let’s be honest, most L2P posts are reactionary QQ in the first place, which doesn’t helps).

I personally do not find marks a good example of counterplaying at all. They’re not the worst example out there, and once they are on the ground, they get a bit better at this situation. But they’re all very samey in how they’re cast and how they look.

Demonts.4593:

I think that things like necros wells or elses instant cast skills like arcanes should be changed (not nerfed) to where you have a chance to dodge or get out of the way. Thieves shadow refuge also doesn’t have many counters because there is so much stealth all you can do is wait. Obviously there are many other skills like moa etc.

Hmmm. so you are calling for more casttime on necro wells and ele aoe? or an impact indicator when they cast on top of themself?
Or are you calling for less lucky dodging stealth casting/attacks?

Reevz.2617:

i think he also meant ranged skills with no tell or travel time i.e marks / scepter 2 and auto etc.

There is a tell, a casting time. Yes its not possible to tell where they are being aimed, but there is definitely a tell to all of them. Not every single tiny ability in the game needs a 1s cast + travel time + aftercast animation.

I don’t think any damaging skill should be instant or unavoidable. Dodging needs to be toned down on classes like S/D to provide actual counter play.

Rolyate.6753:

I don’t think any damaging skill should be instant or unavoidable. Dodging needs to be toned down on classes like S/D to provide actual counter play.

You must have missed the thief skill bar.

Bhawb.7408:

Reevz.2617:

i think he also meant ranged skills with no tell or travel time i.e marks / scepter 2 and auto etc.

There is a tell, a casting time. Yes its not possible to tell where they are being aimed, but there is definitely a tell to all of them. Not every single tiny ability in the game needs a 1s cast + travel time + aftercast animation.

i said travel time not cast time, and tiny kitten glows on someones hand from potentially 1200+ range is hardly a tell on necro marks lmao

Yeah, pvp with the gigantic marks is like drawing with those extra fat playschool crayons

I agree that some insta cast skills / builds should be toned down, but for the most part insta cast is fine because it either balances other easy to see animations allowing sources of reliable damage, or is a tradeoff for rolling a really glassy setup.

Counter proposal: give dodges a casttime. Isn’t it pretty skillless and unfair that you can’t counter dodges because the enemy will get an invulnerability timeframe instantly?

Don’t take it too seriously, it would be interesting to see though.