Guild Wars 2

I use it in PvP (or used, I don’t play anymore) since 2012, and I can’t play without it, on pair with shadowstep. Vanishing and reappearing somewhere distant is what defines a thief.

It has diverse functionalities; can be used both for defense and offense. However, it requires some planning and preparation – another thiefy things.

@up
Are you sure you linked the right build, because it makes no sense for me in a couple of cases? List of redundant things:

• havoc mastery (obviously),
• entire trickery line (it’s poor for p/p, pick critical strikes for extra damage),
• rune of the scholar (a stiff breeze will cancel the damage bonus),
• assassin signet (total waste)
• basilisk venom (impact strike is better in almost every case).

My proposition:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVn8lCFmidPBmOBkmiFYCbOEWCbhbXgPwgSLBEAyAA-TJBEABmXGAgnAABnCgc2fAA

@Chokolata
HoT is very bad PvP-wise, and this is a PvP subforum. Balance was much better before it. In fact, now it reached its bottom since the game release. There were always some problems, but never so huge. To make it even worse, we can see no significant improvements – that is deleting power creep once for all, not gently ‘shaving’ it for eternity.

What we can see instead is painfully dumbing down the gameplay, to make it more accessible to beginners. It will work for increasing population of PvP, but it costs the game’s quality.

Making elite specs OP surely increased sales, but it also showed the gameplay quality is not their top priority. Maybe they just wanted to collect extra money to spend in on e-sports afterwards, to further increase the quality. It could work, but seeing the amount of balancing mistakes and knee-jerk reactions done, it won’t.

Fivedawgs.4267

most competitive games have no more than 3 maps: Lol Dota and stuff.

This is actually a minus of these moba games, which is cached up with good game mechanics. The only reason LoL and DoTA2 has one ,,competitive’’ map, is original DoTA from Warcraft 3. It was a single map, nobody bothered making different versions. After years, everything was copied by LoL and DoTA2, without thinking , because ,,it just works, so why change’’.

Yes, there is a need for more maps, especially annihilation mode.

Serious Thought.5394:

By doing that, you’d just enforce d/p main set. Really really hard. The only self sustainable weaponset would remain d/p. You’d kill p/p, s/p, and staff. All in one, neat shot.

This.

D/P is not the only weapon set the thief has. More viable move would be deleting heartseeker’s ability to stealth when leaping over own black powder smoke. This is almost uncounterable combo and easy to perform. Zero risk, high reward = not thiefy.

However, I imagine some people would be very upsed once it is taken away from them. Some compensation would be required.

@Valkyriez.6578
Balance is always more important than variety, but conquest mode, spirit watch and skyhammer are fine. If there is something imbalanced in these maps/game mode, it’s not them, but classes. Classes are (compared to first year of GW2) stupidly imbalanced.

The problem is, these patches are only fun at the beginning, but after a week people will figure out what’s broken OP and start abusing it. One or two weeks of fun (drinking), followed by three months of misery (hangover). No core issues were addressed, only ,,shaking up the meta’’. Everybody aboard of buff-nerf roller coaster.

@Deimos Tel Arin
It is fine to have 5 stats amulets as long as there are not more than 9 amulets in total in PvP. You suggested to add one hundred additional amulets, what is very bad for balance.

@Berry Pun Pup
This is an interesting suggestion, although it would take too much freedom of choice from players. For example, I would like to play an assassin elementalist, but I can’t, because devs want ele to be a pure support. Or I would like to play a tanky thief, but can’t, because devs want thief to be a typical burst-or-die class.

There needs to be a compromise between freedom and balance.

More amulets, with 5 unique stats on each?

I would rather say, in PvP should be at most 9 different amulets:

• 3x for damage dealer,
• 3x for bruiser/tank,
• 3x for support.

This is the only way we could have some kind of balance in here. Balacing things with 100 different amulets is literarly impossible; unless all of them are almost identical, but then why so many?

How about just take away those cheap reveals from engineer and revenant? They are absolutely unnecessary, only creating power creep.

Win while having 2 thieves in team —> Okay, cool.
Lose while having 2 thieves in team → Write about it on forum.

Also:
Player X did something wrong while playing a meta class/build → Nevermind.
Player X did something wrong while playing a thief → Bully them and complain on chat.

@Evan Lesh
Are we going to have the feature anytime soon? Because it’s like very important for quality of PvP.

Everybody is ,,trapped’’ in this stupid system, yet some people manage to climb up anyway. How is this even possible?

@SlayerSixx.5763
By being close-mid ranged, you utilize agility and elusiveness the most. There are a little reasons to invest into agility and acrobatics while being long ranged.

All weapon sets we have already follow this idea (except P/P, which is a mess). Thief is supposed to be high risk/high reward. There is no risk at long range, therefore you can’t have big rewards = not really what a thief would do.

With my proposition, you could stay at long range if you liked, but most rewarding would be jumping into dangerous melee range to finish the business, delivering big burst – or dying.

@SlayerSixx.5763
Thief is supposed to be a close range duelist/burst class, and my suggestion keeps it this way. We have also shortbow as ranged weapon; it just needs a buff to auto attack projectile speed and reverted cluster bomb range nerf (plus projectile speed buff).

Keep it mind, just like heartseeker is not always used when target is below 25% hp, so my version of body shot wouldn’t. Getting into close range with pistol is dangerous, as opposed to sniping from some ledge, so damage increase is a fair trade off here. Now, playing in close range with P/P is only punished, without any rewards.

Make #2 a ,,heartseeker’’ of pistol, but with damage scaling with range instead of target’s hp. Highest damage in melee range, lowest at 900 range. Max damage should be slightly lower than HS, and min damage should hit like auto attack. Set initiative cost to 3. Also, channel time should be 3/4 second, and be visible.

Then, change unload to something similar to shortbow #3:
- quickly fire both pistols, each apply 3 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds (damage like 2x auto attack),
- leap backward (can trigger stealth with #5),
- 2x combo projectile,
- 4 initiative cost.

GG, entite weapon set fixed. Predicted fix introduction time: by 2030.

@kuritsutian.2987
Older players can remember times, when we actually could que from anywhere outside of HotM. While waiting, I used to run jumping puzzles*, roam WvW or do world completion achievements.

Yes, blame developers, who are unprofessionally forcing competitive atmosphere in sPvP, ruining fun for many, especially veteran, players. This change should be reverted asap, but who cares anyway…

* my favourite was obsidian sanctum; dueling with random people – it’s dead after changes

While we are at it, do the same with shortbow auto attack, because it has like 90% miss chance above 600 units range against moving targets. Not asking to buff it to 1200, like it is supposed to be – just 900 range, please.

Because you are supposed to be locked in HotM with fellow hardcore PvPers, form up a pro team, participate in leagues and eventually win money. If you are bored while waiting for que, you can always watch replays of tournaments on twitch.tv.

A good warrior is the best opponent one could fight in PvP. Balanced sustain, strong burst potential, and is actually punished by game mechanics when doing mistakes. I think it wouldn’t be boring to spectate a mach, where everybody plays warriors, but with different builds (unique weapon sets per team).

They could just delete these icons and allow us to gain actually valuable loot to show our gaming progress. In PvE, I could farm legendary skin; in PvP, I can’t* – why?

*except participating and winning tournaments, while in PvE a common Bob can farm them just for spending time playing

Maybe the guy was trying out a new class, what means he had low ,,class mmr"? I remember devs once mentioned there exists such a thing.

In general, skillful builds are not recommended in this PvP meta, and using distracting daggers with this trait takes skill.

It would be really fun and rewarding to play these daggers + sword/pistol or pistol/pistol + boon steal in interrupt + impacting disruption if:

• people weren’t spamming stability,
• people weren’t spamming blind,
• animations in this game were actually visible and required longer cast time (especially heals)

Tried it, and it doesn’t work. You could however play this trait with sword/pistol for really good burst with pistol whip. It’s fun to see your target die to pulmonary impact while fleeing, after getting pistol whipped.

Picking other traps than shadow is waste of a slot. Playing condi thief (especially without d/d) is also waste of time. You can counter certain builds, but overall you put yourself in disadvantage, because any other class can do better as condi. Thief can’t even have burn, meanwhile necros can burst you with… chill and fear. Total mess.

@Jekkt.6045
Nerfing the other elite specs to a degree would make warrior viable. The only question is – will devs do this? Probably not, because they currently insist on making GW2 PvP pay2win.

Vanilla specs could also be viable once again in future if, again, devs wanted to keep the game balanced, but apparently they avoid balance like fire.

@Sarevok.2638
Buffing underpowered aspects of the game to match those overpowered is a flawed way of thinking, leading to chaos. No, the single thing wouldn’t break things, but if you do many single things, they together will.

sPvP in GW2 is fun, but that’s it. There are many ,,must-fix-for-yesterday" desing flaws mentioned above (passive traits, impossible to interrupt heals, rolling face over keyboard actually effective, etc.), and while looking at the speed of implementing new features, it could be a decent PvP mode, but not faster than in 20 years. Also, this is without counting in big steps backward, like the new elite specs, which could double the time, or even extend it to infinity.

However, I see a great potential in the new arenas added to guild halls. There, players could organize fights with their own rules – arena shape, banned builds, and so on. With freedom comes power.

One more thing is must have – duels in open world. This ,,low level perk’’ has to be accomplished, if we want to have any serious PvP here. Might seem to be unrelated, but is actually mandatory.

Oh, almost forgot most important thing. There will be no esports as long as game devs push toward it. The esports must be created by players, or namely veterans, who, for some unknown reasons, keep receiving the short end of stick all the time, in favour of n00bs (artificially increasing sPvP population by dumbing down gameplay).

Not really worth it, even for most diehard fans of sPvP (who don’t like the idea of jumping into FoTM train). There were always some balance problems, but now they exceed critical level.

It would be a very viable spec if not one detail – the amount of get-out-of-jail-free cards is above limits, what render this kind of builds uneffective outside of slaughtering newbies. In other words, it is barely possible to land the full combo in most fights.

@rchu.8945, Manimarco Devil.1790
We are talking about like top 1% players who abuse this, not 30%. This is marginal and can be withstood. Again, I am not saying this is good – I am saying banning it would create more problems.

@Ithilwen.1529
Cheating is not okay, but the offence committed in this behaviour is marginal. It’s more like parking in a no parking zone near a crowded mall, rather than avoiding paying taxes for whatever reasons.

@SlayerSixx.5763
Then, legendary people will be stuck, unable to progress. Just because they are in minority doesn’t mean we can treat them like second class citizens.

@Ithilwen.1529
But you wouldn’t be able to que with friends, and not allowing to que with friends is not nice. What if there is a guild, full of high ranked people, and they simply want to play with each other, but can’t?

I could suggest to give some form of disadvantage for a team, which contains much higher ranked players. For example, if you fight against full legendary team while being full ruby, you receive free 150 points (numbers need adjustments) at the start of the match. It would be quite easy to implement. Then, legendaries would que almost instantly, while still having some challenge.

Please, don’t add extra skills/traits that are ‘must have’ to play…

Instead, introduce diminishing returns for healing that are based on player’s vitality. Which each heal, next incoming heal is reduced by a % amount. The more vitality you have, the more healing you can receive, before DR kicks in. Diminishing returns reset upon leaving combat.

@SoPP.7034
If your only intent in this topic is to bash on me, then I suggest you to move to some forum like 4chan and play with your fellow trolls.

@HipposWild.7185 and some others
These guys are not evil, they just want to play the game. They don’t want to abuse anything, just keep playing ranked, and climb up the ladder. Punishing people who don’t want to wait for an hour in a que is silly. On top of that, there are many proofs they are not unbeatable, and can also lose.

The system has flaws, but it’s the best one we can have at the moment. Meanwhile, majority of posters here only want to punish/ban/behead smurfers (or those who simply play with less experiened players), while suggesting nothing how to solve the problem..

@SoPP.7034
Banning smurfs would create more problems, what would be even worse. Pretty much nothing can be done here, so…

@SoPP.7034
It has nothing in common with class balance issue, that is awful right now.

@Rednik.3809
So you are matched, against two very good players, one good player and two noobs, that pull them down like an anchor. Unless these noobs are smurfs, but that’s again a separate issue for another topic.

SoPP.7034:

SlayerSixx.5763:

I haven’t played since leagues dropped

Stopped reading after this.

OP has a valid point, irrespective of who won the game.

So what, let them wait 30 minutes in averange for a match?

Even in CS:GO, which has much much more players in ranked matches, global elite players (max rank) team up with less ranked friends, so they don’t have to wait for eternity in que.

Nothing wrong here, move along.

It sometimes glitches out and the animations freezes half way to another ledge… If not that, I would be able to run LA puzzles without mesmer’s portal.

In other words, the best way a warrior can contribute their team is to die.

This is of course a very good idea. There is just one ‘but’: this would make condi stat useless for bleeding.

I’ve posted a topic about removing conditon damage stat (replacing it with tick speed), and making all condis scale with power, but it got buried with other suggestions quickly (feel free to necro): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/suggestion-make-conditions-scale-with-power/first

In general, this would greatly increase diversity by making bad builds suddenly totally viable, like power sword/sword warrior or power pistol/dagger thief.

If you wanted to increase total damage output → go for power stat, which would be universal. Then, you could customize damage dealing by either picking combo of <crit/crit damage>, <condi duration/condi tick rate> or even mixing them.

Uppercut needs to have a small gap closer like 1st attack from the chain. It’s pretty much impossible to land it on a running enemy while being crippled. Or at least make 1st attack apply cripple for 3 seconds.

In a perfect scenario, there should be no distinction between solo and team que. Queing in team should give you small boost toward victories – that’s fair.

However, in GW2, team communication system is below tragic level, and grouping up gives too big bonus. There is a need for at least pings with sounds.

Also, when you team up, you know who you are playing with, and what they are capable of. Playing solo, you have no idea who your teammates are, even what build they use. Total chaos.

Of course, these issues are here pretty much since the game’s launch. They are so visible recently, because the huge balance issues. If the game is balanced, but there are still communication issues, it’s playable.
Now, it’s unplayable.

Is backstab some kind of god skill, so it must hit the hardest across the entire profession?

Anyway, vault is the most telegraphed skill in the game; successfully dethroned eviscerate at it. You cannot chain it into combos with shadowsteps, because it’s an AoE. This two things make it situational, what means backstab is still going to be better at many cases (and worse at some others, obviously).

Celestial should be the default stat set for everybody. The only wrong thing here is that some classes simply aren’t able to utilize it properly (game design flaw). This thing has to be fixed, not celestial itself.
Even if it requires a lot of work, it has to be done in future – assuming we still want to have semi-balanced gameplay (because right now it’s a total chaos).

You can have leap finisher on a dodge, so it gives a reliable stealth access to pp. The problem is… that’s all you got. While pp thief can have access to stealth, all other classes got better boosts (power creep), leaving you underpowered among them.

Same here.

The boss fight cannot be completed if the player died during that AoE thing.
Also, I tried to shield myself with Rytlock and others, but inside the shield, I was still taking damage…

So, the only way to finish this story part is:
1) Don’t die during entire fight.
2) If died, go to character select menu and start everything anew, which is extremly irritating.

Next stronghold map? I hope this one was last (although it’s even fun for casual play), and next we have proper 2v2/3v3 TDM maps without respawns – with ladder and real rewards, obviously.

@up
You didn’t get it.
*
We have so little utility and weapon skills compared to gw1, because gw2 was supposed to be balanced in exchange for freedom.

Result: we don’t have balance, and we don’t have freedom.

Suggestion: scrap the competitive atmosphere, and release like 5 new abilities each patch for every class. Don’t make them unique, use existing animations, etc. just let them be plenty, so we aren’t bored to death in the tiny cage.

This is actually well-designed. If you play staff, you have to choose between staff master or escapist’s absolution. If you play anything else, you are most likely having pistol off-hand, so you can pick between impacting disruption or, again, escapist’s absolution.

The only problem is with dagger off-hand, but who uses it anyway?

Solo que is unnecessary. Look how queuing in a competitive games looks like, for example in CS:GO. There is no distinction between solo and team – and it works perfectly. Maybe it has voice chat, but here we have pings.

If you want to win as much as possible and climb up the ladder asap, then play with a team. Organizing a team is also considered a skill.

If you are a casual, then play solo; but don’t expect to reach the top only by skillfully spamming skills on your favourite profession.

Anyway, the ultimate argument against solo que is extended queuing time, which is already long. In LoL, there is a solo que (or last time I played), but they can afford it thanks to big player base. In gw2, we can’t.

Lastly, there are things with higher priority.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Something that could fix the issue with different builds in pvp would be…..

build templates

Why is this still not a thing?

You mean, something like this? http://store.overwolf.com/app/PvP-Build-Manager