Guild Wars 2

First of all, congratulations Anet on the relatively smooth launch of HoT. I’ve been having tremendous fun zipping through the battlefield on my daredevil. The mobility, the high risk high reward playstyle is there for me. The PvE aspect of thief is in a pretty solid place right now imo, and i absolutely love the fast paced playstyle and versatility of staff, and the new increased open world difficulty.

My only gripe so far is getting one shotted by unavoidable (untelegraphed) sources of damage in large fights on zerker gear. I want to clarify that i’m not talking about messing up, If you get downed by rolling devils, or pocket raptors, stand in sniper ground aoe or stay in the red well then you messed up and that’s your fault. What i mean is there are some ranged attacks right now that some enemies do, that have no clear telegraphs and instantly down you.

One clear example i can give is The Itzel ranged dudes (not the shadowleapers) especially of the elite variety and above. While doing events these guys will often switch aggro and one shot me from range without any perceptible telegraph. This right here is what i consider unavoidable damage in large scale fights and while unavoidable damage is fine, it should definitely not one-shot KO a thief.

Playing a zerk thief overall should be rewarding good timing and skilled use of the new dodge system, not punishing zerk wearers by introducing unavoidable damage sources that 1 hit ko you.

Have any of you guys had similar experiences?

Of course us glass cannon/valk/marauder users have. But chances are devs will just kek at this “Zerker Meta dead!”

Playing a zerker daredevil is fun, in the sense that I can do either really well or really poorly with a few key choices. It is actually quite uncommon for me to get one-shot. I’ll usually lose 75% of my health in one go, but the actual “Oh no I’m dead” attacks will kill my rev in one shot, too. I feel like an actual thief as I scurry about the world. In all the other maps, I can walk right up to an enemy and auto attack it to death with no fear of dying on my side. Here, things are actually dangerous.

I haven’t really encountered much “one shot with no telegraph” attacks. There are times when I am not exactly sure what killed me, but those are usually when I’m in a big event and all the special effects obscure my vision. But for HoT in general, I do have some bits of advice.

#1: Pick your targets carefully. Enemies come in groups, and Fist Flurry can only take out one. You’ll want to go for the one guy who is further away than the others, or the one that has their back to a wall.. If you can neutralize one target with a single skill, such as smoke screen against a ranged attacker, leave the projectile guy for last while you kill the first ones. Enemies with breakbars neutralize a lot of our debuffs, so save them for second. Scorpion Wire’s ability to both create and close distance is underrated.

#2: It is tempting to dodge like mad, but always leave some endurance/initiative. You’ll never know when you’ve got to avoid something, or GTFO of a high damage patch. Snipers hurt, but dying to a sniper because of a lack of plan B hurts worse.

#3: Stealth is your friend. Fight enemy stealth with your stealth. It is a quick aggro drops and a burst skill all in one. The more you use stealth, the less likely an enemy is to pick you out of a crowd..

#4: Be aware. In places like the Tangled Depths, snipers will hide around corners, enemies will pull aggro from a large range, and enemies will attack from atop ledges. Don’t shy away from ranged weapons. Also, holes in the ground are surprisingly common.

#5: Pick good utilities. I know we’re all used to haste + 2 signets, but in HoT it is a bad choice that will get you killed. You don’t always “win” by default here, and in a losing fight Assassin Signet is on the far side of useless. Consider using Shadowstep, Smokescreen, Signet of Agility for its active effects, Scorpion Wire, Shadow Refuge. Yes, it is not max deeps in the traditional sense, but in the new “dead deal no deeps” sense.

Pistol/Dagger works really well on melee and Staff works great on ranged. Also, at least two lines defensively (trickery counts as 1, think of making at least some of DD defensive) and then grabbing offensive utilities (and Dagger Storm) works pretty well.

I am actually more annoyed by some enemies that hit you even if you are miles away and definitely out of range. Similar issue to jelly fish boss in underwater fractal. Even if you dodge, even if you are far away you still get pulled back to boss/npc and one shotted.

Well, the issue isn’t that it’s an untelegraphed attack. It’s just that scaling on mob end up giving them lethal auto attack and that’s what own you (and me from time to time). Only thing that I can say to you is that wmoke screen never leave my utility bar and vanishing from time to time help to reduce these sorry moment.

Granted I haven’t played much of Maguma on my thief yet but the only mob i notice that has a large issue with this is the wyvrens, when they start spitting fire at you. It gets worse with lag since you can’t always tell your in the fire.

Even still, no matter the class, pocket raptors will break you if you aren’t careful. A pro tip for mushroom kings guys since we can’t afford to be dive bombed by them, you’ll see a red ring indicating the area they will dive bomb obviously. Careful, if you leave that ring too early as they are getting the jump ready, they will literally ignore the ring and jump outside of it to get you

Oh another thing: no matter how many people are around, no matter what instance i am in, i always get agro… the boss is literary running after me all fight..how O_O

the only thing that worked temporaly was refuge and then camp sb….

Shadowstep.6049:

Oh another thing: no matter how many people are around, no matter what instance i am in, i always get agro… the boss is literary running after me all fight..how O_O

the only thing that worked temporaly was refuge and then camp sb….

It would make me laugh out loud if they tweaked agro mechanics in HoT to target zerker geared players, in an effort to de-incentivize the zerker meta.

I like zerker daredevil, I know when I died, it was pretty much my fault.

Snoopy Shannon.5123:

I like zerker daredevil, I know when I died, it was pretty much my fault.

Exactly this. If you run a glass cannon (which I do myself also) you should expect such things as one hit kills.

Really, though, it would make a lot more sense if enemy attacks came more frequently but hit less hard. The whole game would probably feel more polished and balance.

To be honest, it is going to be very difficult for Anet to balance around the zerker meta without having any one hit kill skills at all. Anything less than that gives zerker players time to react and recover, I know because I run zerker 99% of the time and 90% of my defeats (in PvE) are from one shot skills. As much as I can appreciate they can be frustrating, I cannot see any other way to balance mobs around zerker gear.

Most one hit kill mobs can be reacted to, once you know their anims. There are a few that have very fast tells, but once you know their modus operandi, they can be a fair bit easier to deal with. When I first went to Verdant Brink, I was getting downed a lot by the veteran Coztic. But now I know how they operate and know their tells, I can predict and react well enough to survive almost all encounters against them. The same it true with all encounters.

Another thing to consider, is that some mobs are designed to be encountered in a certain way. For example, some champions are designed to be extremely difficult to tackle in melee range. Knowing your enemy is the first step in dealing with it, before saying one hit kills should be removed across the board. However, if you find a particular mob, that you simply cannot predict or react to, then bring it up and maybe Anet will have a look at it. One hit kills are necessary in my opinion, so I do not believe a global removal of them is the answer. Specific mob tweaking on the other hand, is something Anet might be more interested in, and is something more players could get behind.

I agree simply with the “untelegraphed” part. BIG hits should always have a tell, so people with low HP pools can have some kind of chance to react. Even if it’s a second or two warning… some kind of indication should be there.

The big hits should stay though, it adds an element of challenge that any game needs.

Hitsuke.5304:

I agree simply with the “untelegraphed” part. BIG hits should always have a tell, so people with low HP pools can have some kind of chance to react. Even if it’s a second or two warning… some kind of indication should be there.

The big hits should stay though, it adds an element of challenge that any game needs.

I agree that there should be some way to know a big hit is coming, but not necessarily from a clear tell. For example, lets say a champion always does a melee range one hit kill skill after it regains its defiance bar. The skill it uses could be instant, because experienced players will know to avoid it when the bar gets full. Or perhaps a mob will do an instant cast one hit kill skill a set number of seconds after it does a slow aoe attack.

So long as there is a way for players to react to or predict big hits, I don’t see there being an issue.

Runewolf.8456:

Granted I haven’t played much of Maguma on my thief yet but the only mob i notice that has a large issue with this is the wyvrens, when they start spitting fire at you. It gets worse with lag since you can’t always tell your in the fire.

Any balance suggestion that use lag as reasons for a change are not valid suggestions.

The game is designed to be played within ideal latency conditions, lag isn’t a game design issue, it’s an issue with the user’s connection or the game’s servers, both of which are completely separate things from ability or encounter balance unless they cause lag at a server level.

From the launch of HoT until yesterday I was running a venomshare build that in normal PvE had me frequently being downed toward the end of a fight (less enemies to heal me off Signet of Malice triggers) but with the mob mostly defeated I’d be downed only about as long as the invulnerability period lasted then something would die and
I’d be back up to finish off the last 2-3 enemies with auto-attacks.

However my attempts to use this build in HoT have failed catastrophically.
In large groups I can avoid most enemy hazards (those mordrum snipers and their red lines of death can eat my tiny health pool) but when outnumbered by a mob, for instance defending a point in Verdant brink or running a lane in the 3rd map, I seem to be getting a lot of instant deaths or deaths during the downed animation when I would normally be invulnerable. I am coming off a slight break from the game, but I don’t recall seeing a change to the downed mechanics in the patch notes.