Guild Wars 2

ErionHashimoto.3015

The match also wasn’t recorded and no pips were awarded.

Just wanted to point out that I have experienced lag spikes even when there wasn’t a lot of people in the map.

On a more funny note, I have been accused of DDoSing people because of this.

Jessica Boettiger.2563:

It has been the case for a while now that players who very recently respawned are not worth any WXP. To bring other systems in-line with this, players who are not worth any WXP are now also not worth any loot or XP. We are aware that this also affects sigil stacks, and are evaluating whether we want to treat the stacks the same way: only when a player is worth WXP/XP and loot, can stacks be gained from killing them.

Are there any reasons besides consistency (which frankly is far from a valid reason) that made you implement this change?

A lot of players are unhappy about this, myself included.

What do you mean by help? In any case:

Overall balancing
1. Warrior (needs to be nerfed considerably)
2. Thief (nerf zerker type of builds and the fact it’s the only viable type)
3. Ranger (please do something…)

Help as in buffs
1. Ranger
2. Ranger
3. Ranger

Aberrant.6749:

The risk is being interrupted and having spent a lot of ini in the process with no reward. Stopping a bp->hs will wreck a thief and force them to start popping utilities to make up for it. It would be more forgiving if they didn’t have to hs through the field.

They also lose out on the c&d damage (doesn’t apply in sPvP where c&d needs a buff to make up for the higher risk though).

I’m very much behind this.
To those of you saying it’s too hard to stop the combo, the Thief lays down a loud, distinctive, red-circled AoE blind before using Heartseeker. Is that not a good enough visual and audio clue? And it’s a slow skill/combo. From what I’ve noticed, people just can’t be bothered to use their interrupts more wisely (don’t worry if you’re a Warrior since you can spam your stuns and win).

Black Powder + Heartseeker costs a whooping 9 initiative. 7 with Infusion of Shadow. Each additional stack of stealth costs 3 more.

Anyway, I’m not saying it’s super easy to stop it. But if you keep a presence of mind, it’s not that hard either.

While I have nothing to suggest, I agree that something needs to be done. I play strictly Thief but avoid full glass cannon because of how unfair it feels. Sure the Thief that blows CD to two shot someone will be very handicapped for a while, but that’s looking only at the big picture.

From a 1v1 perspective, especially if the target is jumped without a fair chance to react, it can be extremely frustrating, and in that frustration people (myself included to an extent) will feel the need to adapt their builds too specifically to counter Thieves. I don’t believe any other class is causing that kind of pressure in the meta, except maybe Warriors (could be because I play Thief). In any case, it shouldn’t be that way.

While I don’t think Steal is bad, I truly feel it could be a bit better.

I believe Steal should rip a boon naturally. Then, slightly rework Bountiful Theft so it steals one boon and the boons stolen (still two total) this way are shared with your allies (along with Vigor, of course).

Or how about you gain a boon based on the class you stole from? Like Protection from Guardians and Stability from Warriors? Make each boon last an amount of time that’s fair for what they are. Only problem is that it could be bothersome to implement this for PvE with so many different kinds of mobs.

Maybe instead, in addition to the usual skill, you “steal” (read mimic) something characteristc of the target class that’s automatic, such as a Chaos Armor from Mesmers or Life Steal from Necromancers. But this would be even harder to implement. Besides, I may have gone too far on this last one.

How about it pulses an AoE blind once or twice (not necessarily a smoke field, but more like the Cloaked in Shadow trait), and removes any existing Revealed status? That way you get some mitigation to react and panick-stealth yourself.

Also, I feel like 25% health threshold is too low for such a squishy class.

Very much agreed. It’s not like I ever really enjoyed perma-stealthing or perma-dodging, but we don’t have much of a choice when it comes to survival. We’re squishy as heck. Now those original methods were nerfed (perma-stealthing, I admit, needed to be addressed) but the supposed compensations don’t live up to their promises.

No offense to ArenaNet, but balancing the Thief class seems to be unreasonably challenging for them. I personally think that in general, they focus too much on feedback from whiners and players who can’t be bothered to adjust to fights of a different pace which is the case when engaging a Thief.

Hopefully this sub-forum can change that. But then again, it’s my opinion.

I’m tired of having my class nerfed considerably every single balance patch. We haven’t gotten a major buff in a long time, have we? Have you guys ever stopped to think that maybe the reason a lot of people struggle with fighting thieves is because they can’t be bothered to adjust and play differently?

Nerfing Opportunist is rather contradictory to your desire to reward active engagement in fights. Regardless of your aim, 5 seconds of CD is unfair.

The nerf on Infusion of Shadow is understandable, but it’s a major nerf that will decrease the efficiency of some builds if there’s nothing else to compensate and balance the change. In that sense, I don’t see much at the moment…

Quick Recovery will now not be able to compete with the other master traits on any build. It’s just been added to the pile of useless traits.

Assassin’s Reward was bad for a master trait before the intended buff. Now it’s been buffed a bit but put in grandmaster tier? And it’s switching places with Hard to Catch, a bad trait that can easily put you in worse situations than if it had not triggered, not to mention the lack of control you have over it. Speaking of which:

PLEASE do something about Last Refuge. How long do we have to keep begging you?

Neural.1824:

ErionHashimoto.3015:

Neural.1824:

ErionHashimoto.3015:

… not to mention it’s very expensive.

This one quote from your comments is the single reason you will never see legendary weapons changed from soul-bound. Anet makes too much money off of them.

I meant in-game gold. You’re assuming enough people to count buy gems with real currency and convert them into gold.

Every time you buy something on the TP, whether it’s gold made in game or via gems, gold is removed from the in game economy, which affects the economy overall. As I’ve said in comments elsewhere recently, the numbers touted by Anet a week or so ago show that roughly $1.2mil dollars worth of gold was removed from the economy in game in just repair fees due to deaths caused by one mob type.
I’m all for people making gold in game and using it to purchase things. It hurts Anets RL wallet every time, but you can’t escape the taxes they charge.
On top of that there are simply a huge number of people who pay real cash for their shinies (if this wasn’t true, things would change rapidly until this was fact, it’s how their model works).

I understand that, but have to admit that I fail to see the connection with the topic.
I apologize.

As for people paying real cash for in-game gold, I mean gem to gold through the TP exclusively, which is how it would apply here. The amount of clandestine cash-to-gold websites out there and their decent traffic tells me people mostly go for those. And seeing how gem prices in gold are expensive (as of now it averages 4g55s per 100), and generally keep increasing, doesn’t that mean cash-to-gem buyers are severely outnumbered by gold-to-gem ones?

These are real questions. I’m not very knowledgeable in this area.

Neural.1824:

ErionHashimoto.3015:

… not to mention it’s very expensive.

This one quote from your comments is the single reason you will never see legendary weapons changed from soul-bound. Anet makes too much money off of them.

I meant in-game gold. You’re assuming enough people to count buy gems with real currency and convert them into gold.

NOTE TO EVERYONE: I added more thoughts to the end of the original post.

Titan.3472:

Anet could sell an unbind component feature from the gem store for 1000-2000 gems each. They would make some money without removing completely and freely the bind system, people would use this or to sell back a legendary when they change their build or to reequip on another toon. There would be no abuse on this as the unbind item would be expensive and only available on gem store. I believe a lot of people would love to see this implemented. You can also imagine different quality of “unbind stones” for each tiers of rarity and then different price ranges depending on said rarity related feature. So you would have “rare unbind quality stone” for rare items at 300 gems each / “exotic unbind quality stone” for exotic items at 600 gems each / “ascended unbind quality stone” at 1200 gems each for ascended items / and “legendary unbind quality stone” at 2400 gems each.
This is a good compromise between players, Anet and system balance avoiding abusive behaviours and not much affecting TP economy. Allowing also extra $ incomes for the game.

I wouldn’t be opposed to that.
But first I’d like to see “naturally” account-bound-on-use legendary weapons.

quakeroatmeal.4829:

-1. This is essentially the equivalent of using a more powerful toon to gear an underplayed one, also known as “twinking”.

As for the comment about items from the store that can unbind an item, I’ve seen it in other MMOs, but usually at the price of about $50 per and they are usually only available for limited times / random promotional times.

There are already many ways to “twink.”
For legendary weapons specifically, you can craft one using your “more powerful toon” and transfer it to your “underplayed one.”
Even if this was a legitimately major problem, I don’t see how making just one very limited class of weapons accessible for all your characters could affect it enough.
Regardless of all that, though, it’s your hard-earned weapon being used by your characters.

quakeroatmeal.4829:

mXz.4512:

Agree, it’s [you] the player, meeting the achievements – not the characters themselves. So [you] should have the given choice to use what [you] have spent so long to make/earn, on any character you feel you want. I’d too like to see this happen.

Except a legendary weapon isn’t an achievement. It’s an item. You have achievement points/titles/awards for achievements that are account-wide for your accomplishments as a player.

We don’t mean achievements in the technical sense, and they do unlock an account medal (still not technically achievements, I know).

Erebus.7568:

legendaries are TRADEBLE!!! other ascendent weapons are NOT,
you dont need 500 in the craft to even make it….
you can buy them from the market.
enough said….

Legendary weapons are tradable until used. Then they become soulbound. My suggestion is that they become account bound on use, since they are so difficult to obtain. That’s also the reason they are tradable, according to Colin Johanson.

timos.6754:

Id love to see that hapen rly achievment point bonuses r affecting all of ur acount cuz U the player achieved something and u get the benefit from that no matter wch chatacter ur playing .. so why should not be able to do the same with a legendary? <probably the bigest achievment in the game>

That’s a good way of looking at it, too.

Watch the 19:05 mark of this video by MattVisual:
Guild Wars 2: Colin Johanson PAX 2013 Interview w/ Your Questions!

Like Colin said, it takes ages to make a legendary weapon, not to mention it’s very expensive. Precursors are extremely rare, and even if they are becoming (most likely, according Colin in the same video from the link above) craftable, we can all assume it still won’t be easy to make them. Gifts of Exploration are limited to two per character that achieves world completion, so you would have to create a new character and use its own gifts if you want more than two legendary weapons for your original character (or pay thousands of gold buying one from the trading post). World completion itself can be a long and tedious process.

While it seems the question wasn’t exactly about what I’m referring to in this topic, it made me think of how it would be much more convenient if, for example, you could have your same currently soulbound Eternity from your Warrior be used by your Guardian.

Now, this may invalidate the effort that some players have already put into making extra legendary weapons of the same type. To counter that, they could be given options to unbind them once, or even dismantle the weapons into their original, base ingredients.

What are your thoughts?

EDIT: I believe that making legendary weapons accessible to your whole account will also increase the value of this hard-to-earn weapon class, being the only one to provide said feature.

All I want is to be able to do something even remotely useful with them other than crafting. I’d settle for selling them to the NPC by now…

All I want is to be able to do something even remotely useful with them other than crafting. I’d settle for selling them to the NPC by now…

YES! Please, ArenaNet…

Gab Superstar.4059:

ErionHashimoto.3015:

Wow, DR. You guys were never bad, but you seem better than last time. Good stuff.

We were always better than GoM, in terms of score. You just manage to night cap a lot during the week days and win anyway.

EDIT: It’s already happening.

Yeah… not sure it was just the night caps. I played consistently during the day when it was us and NSP and I felt we generally did better. There were even people complaining from both NSP and DR on Reddit saying that we were too numerous for the sake of balance in the matchup.

So far I think you’ve been the better server this week, though. x)

Wow, DR. You guys were never bad, but you seem better than last time. Good stuff.

I’m loving this close matchup. Good stuff, everyone.

Well, good for HoD with all the transfers. You guys are doing great now. And I wasn’t there, but sorry NSP for the lack of sportsmanship with the double-teaming spawn camp. ..

narcky.2187:

Lol really?

Much like last night, all I ever see is NSP and HoD teaming up against GoM. Literally neither NSP nor HoD were attacking each other.

GoM had 3 things taken over by HoD and 3 by NSP with only their keep as their own, both NSP / HoD zergs were attacking them. Seriously it’s boring and GoM is just adapting and getting better, which is kudo’s to them and is in the long run good for them as they’re obviously getting better.

This is all EB that is. Anyways, boring stuff.

Our BL was double-teamed a few times too. I even spotted groups with both HoD and NSP running together.

Ah well… considering the odds, we did okay.