Guild Wars 2

Figured it would fit here rather than creating another post.

Shadow Refuge: while the quickness boon is active, the animation for Shadow Refuge will end earlier than the stealth pulses do. If you leave the area of the original AOE animation, you will be revealed.

Metabrit.1839:

4. Sword: Auto-attack is clunky and feels wrong, skill 2 is basically useless, make skill 3 on sword evade, skill 4 for sword needs its block fixing, skill 5 costs too much energy imo

This was probably the most unsatisfying and problematic thing about sword for me. Shiro is a pretty energy intensive legend as is, and if the auto-attack doesn’t feel right the set loses a lot of its appeal.

I think the revenant’s sword auto-attack would benefit greatly from making the overall animations and feedback more similar to that of thief. As they are now they just feel and sound so underwhelming.

The trade-off is too much. They do far too little compared to some of the other very powerful utilities we have.

What is listed on the wiki is what has been confirmed by new outlets and the like.

Who can say if that list will be the all of the changes that will come for WvW.
The “Competitive Week” preview of the September feature pack will be coming this week, so we should probably reserve our judgement for a little longer.

Just to speculate, the August 19th blog post is titled “Tricks and Explosive Finales”.
They have confirmed that the Siege Disabler is a new trick, but what about the explosive?

If this is the extent of the changes, I’ll be right next to you with my pitchfork, but for now we should wait.

Romek.4201:

guess everyone would love this cause its a nice feature

but this would soooo kill the game

gw2 is all bout skins and shinies but who would care bout this when noone can see it?^^

You and your allies will still see the unique models.

This change only effects enemies.

Branden Gee.2150:

While there are some arguments to have this available in all PvP formats we want to see how this new feature is used by the high-end, skilled players at the top tier of PvP before considering rolling this out to the more broad PvP user base.

I’m sorry, but what is there to see?

Players will toggle this option on and will be able to react better to enemies because they aren’t fighting a team of 5 asura. It just sounds like you’re trying to inflate the egos of players who focus on Team Arena —sorry, I mean— high-end, skilled players at the top tier of PvP.

What, exactly, about the usage of this feature do you need to “see”?
What are the reasons for not rolling this out for all of sPvP (and even WvW)?

You’re pandering to the Team Arena community by giving them a shiny new toy while denying it to the rest of your player base even though it would clearly benefit every competitive mode of this game.

This is a huge letdown.

If my memory serves me correctly, the low setting also standardizes animations to a certain extent.
Most people want standardized models in order to actually be able to see what asuras are doing.

Would love to have this feature in WvW.

Just some general WvW tips.

• Bind your “Look Behind” key. Whenever you’re running around in the world, periodically look behind you to stay on your toes. If you’re not in a safe area, you most likely don’t have the leisure to let your guard down.

• Be aware of your surroundings. Try to scout around corners and into camps if you’re going into them solo. If you’re soloing a camp, keep checking for enemies while fighting.

I main a thief and all I play is WvW. At least half of my battles are over before they’ve even started because the other player has bad battlefield awareness.

I think people were hoping for buffs along the lines of what we saw with Engi and Ranger. Most of the buffs are fairly minor and many traits are still completely useless.

If there’s no reason for people to get excited, of course they’ll complain about nerfs (regardless of whether they are necessary or not).

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Change the (currently useless) acro XIII grandmaster to give a second of protection instead of stability, and then we can talk about longer revealed time.

While a minor trait for protection when revealed would be all kinds of awesome, I seriously doubt we’d get something that good unless we trait heavily for it :/

I don’t think stealth related traits have any business being in Acrobatics.

They really should make it a Shadow Arts master trait to make people choose between condi removal, blind on stealth, or protection on revealed. They could also just add it on to the master minor trait so we get increased stealth duration and protection when entering or on reveal with a cooldown. Essentially a toned down version of PU. Probably OP though.

The 4 second revealed is a big problem for me. You get used to being able to CnD after a full dagger auto attack chain in PVE and WVW, so it feels unnatural and clunky when you can’t do that in sPVP.

While I dislike the idea of an instant-cast, 1200 range revealed skill, I think it is too early to sound the alarms. How many engineers are going to actually run this skill? Static discharge engi will most likely have it, but all of the condi-slinging P/Sh engineers probably won’t take it. It would mean a huge drop in their utility and damage when they could just take a third kit.

Thieves will be getting a balance pass as well, so lets save our tinfoil hats until then.

The ANet Glassdoor employee reviews are an interesting read. You may need to log in to see them all.

There have been a few new employee reviews in the past months and most of them talk about a disconnect between what the higher ups in the company want and what players want. In the end, it’s their game, but reading through the reviews is a bit discouraging as a player.

I would say come to Gandara and enjoy some smallscale, but then that would mean taking away actual people for me to fight.

Go with Desolation. They need more off-peak roamers.

TheBandit.7031:

I’ll try changing my runes, I was a little iffy when I bought them. The problem I have with bloodlust is you lose all the charges if you enter water, swap weapons, or leave the area. And I do all those a lot.

If you buy a second Bloodlust sigil and put it on your underwater weapon, you save your stacks when you go into the water. With the change to stacking sigils, you have to commit to having it on one of your weapon sets. IMO, it’s better to have it on your shortbow if you plan on using one. I may swap between D/D, D/P, and S/D, but generally SB never leaves my bar so there isn’t a chance of losing the stacks from changing weapons.

Nick.6972:

Alright. Jokes aside. Is there actually anyone working WvW? I don’t mean the people who fix one bug every 3 months, I mean people actually creating future WvW content.

If there are, they’re not interacting with the community in any way.

Did you post the wrong runes on your thief build there? You have 1 Rune of Infiltration and 4 Runes of the Krait. You also left out your food, which may be a factor as well considering you can get up to a 10% damage increase from something like Seaweed Salad.

Assuming that you just forgot to change the rest of the runes to Infiltration, you might want to change them to something that gives you more power and unconditional % damage modifiers.

They added more + duration food in the newest Living Story. I doubt they’re going to be changing anything up with the current “meta” food situation anytime soon.

Also good to save your level 80 because of the age of the character. If you care about birthday items, that’s one extra character who already has time built up.

The biggest frustration is that they keep mentioning it when they talk about updates to WvW. It has added nothing to WvW server communities aside from the occasional PVE player farm. They claimed it could be an area for them to test new mechanics they may eventually use to help breathe some new life into the base WvW maps. It’s been 6 months — where are the updates?

DeadlySynz.3471:

Well conversely, the thieves and PU mesmers can change their build then to counter a Rangers “guard” build then.

Taking 1 skill does not make a build.

If it does apply Revealed when entering the area being guarded, there is no reason the pet should gain stealth.

Also, does it continue to apply Revealed if the target exits the 240 radius and then reenters it? How many targets would it effect and how often?

If you play enough with the trait, eventually you can factor it into your gameplay strategy, but there are oftentimes when it triggers unexpectedly. It’s very frustrating when you CnD as a spike is incoming and are suddenly Revealed because of Last Refuge and then proceed to die (in a situation where you may have lived).

It was probably suggested in the past, but some possible solutions are to make it so that the trait cancels your queued action or gives you a 1-2 second Stealth that doesn’t cause the Revealed debuff on your next hit.

This trait has saved my life just as many times as it has killed me. It just needs a bit of tweaking.

You posted suggestions without any concrete ways of putting them into practice.

1. How exactly would you want this to work? More items in the game along the lines of Stealth Traps or skills that cause Revealed? Blocking Stealth in its current state for more than 5 seconds with a skill would be going overboard in my opinion. Another forum goer suggested blasting or whirling in light fields should remove Stealth. That would be an interesting counterplay, but it wouldn’t be universal to all classes. Also, if more skills begin to apply Revealed, there should be a visible indicator on your character model instead of just the debuff icon.

2. I don’t think removing it entirely is the way to go. Maybe reducing the duration of the stealth offered through leaps and blasts?

3. How would this work? Is every skill that currently grants stealth going to now be a 1 second channel instead of an actual attack or utility? What happens to Cloak and Dagger? Blinding Powder?

4. Right now — depending on the weapon set — so much of a thief’s offense and defense is tied to stealth that reducing the access to it would crush certain playstyles. Look back at what happened when ANet initially changed Revealed to 4 seconds in PVE/WvW. Raising the base HP of low-tier classes could help somewhat. You wouldn’t need to rely on Stealth as much, but it would only be a bandaid.

5. Have you taken 2 steps in a battle in GW2 and not been hit? The amount of AOE and cleave in this game is ridiculous. Using things like Shadow Refuge and Mass Invis (or even just blasting smoke fields on thief/engineer) would just end in frustration and remove a large amount of tactics when deciding to disengage.

6. This could actually develop into something if balanced correctly, but I could also see it causing a lot of backlash towards thieves in WvW. Does it only apply to the caster or to allies under Stealth as well? How would Resilience of Shadows work? Maybe instead of more damage, there is a -25% debuff to movement speed? The thief trait Fleet Shadow would increase it to the base amount. This would give some extra benefit to running with access to swiftness or Traveler/Speed runes.

I’ve tested with a few other teleports. It works for both Shadowstep and Infiltrator’s Signet, but the timing is much more difficult because of the instant activation. It might work with sword 2, D/P 3, and Steal as well, but I have yet to test them.

Stealthing is the only defense against an invulnerability stomp. Keep it as it is.

Johje Holan.4607:

Yes I’d take unbalanced untested maps.

PvE maps would be awesome.

I don’t want to wait a year or two for more maps. In fact I won’t, I’ll just move on and stop playing.

Seconding this. The map design in this game is beautiful, and there are many structures that could easily function as towers, keeps, and camps that exist in the world already.

Even if they weren’t completely balanced in terms of keep/tower location, as long as they didn’t give statistical advantages (Overgrowth buff) I think most players would be fine with it.

Vavume.8065:

Straegen.2938:

• New WvW mastery that allows players to extend the refresh siege times

This is what I was going to suggest, we need new masterys anyway, and this would be perfect, it should be expensive too, 300 rank points and then your placed siege lasts 2 or maybe 3 hours. Tbh its surprising they haven’t already added this, seems like a no brainer.

A good place to put something like this would be the already existing Build and Repair Mastery lines. Maybe add in a few more beneficial effects (return siege to blueprints, extend decay timer on siege you tag, repair siege, etc.).

style.6173:

+/- duration food allows for people to better plan strategy. This game lacks that already and removing more of it is a bad idea.

I disagree and think it’s the complete opposite.

If they tone down the condition duration/reduction foods, it will give players more freedom to choose food that actually complements their builds. Many people choose Lemongrass Poultry soup simply to negate the +40% duration of Koi Cakes/Veggie Pizza. If it was shaved down to something along the lines of 25%, players wouldn’t feel so pigeonholed into having to run -condi duration food.

Also, 40% condition duration is quite high compared to the benefits other foods give. It’s the equivalent of going 8 points into your condition duration trait line. You then still get the additional +70 condition duration. Most other foods that give you a stat increase only have their high stat giving you the equivalent of investing 2 in their respective trait line.

Juba.8406:

decay timer should be 30mins max

Why, exactly?

THE Dentist.5960:

Yeah you are right, ANET should keep everything the same…….. oh wait…….

Your snarky response doesn’t give any constructive way of dealing with what is a very real problem for some servers. How would you suggest dealing with siege griefing?

I’ve also let regular siege decay in order to build superior siege because of the siege cap. There would have to be a balanced way to destroy siege or return it to it’s blueprint form in order for a system with unlimited decay to work.

I like fishball’s solution as a short-term fix.

This was an old bug that seemed to have been fixed, but after the latest update it has come back.

It mostly occurs to me in WvW. When the minimap is zoomed in and I drag the map with my mouse to view other areas, the minimap automatically pans to character once I release my mouse button instead of staying at the location and panning back after a set time.

If getting hit while in stealth removed you from stealth.

Jeknar.6184:

Lemme me see, you want a new map with unique objectves to not play the old boring wvw maps… Hmmmmm…

Oh wait… They gave you that map! It's called...Edge of the Mists. But what did you people do? “Oh, it’s kitteny. Let’s go back to our old boring Wvw maps because it’s better…”

Eh, ok…

The lack of server association is what turned me (and probably many others) off from that map. Once people saw how profitable it could be, it turned into a huge farm. I would guess that 95% of the people there don’t play for the fights and are only there for the farm.

Putting that aside, I think a problem with producing multiple maps would be the same as we have now, population imbalances. For many servers, the population is spread thin over the existing 4 maps. Would they be thrown away if this system took over? It wouldn’t necessarily be as bad if mobs and events were still on the maps.

I imagine it would come down to balance. There’s a reason the WvW maps are mirrored and designed the way they are. PVE maps don’t follow the same design philosophy as WvW (even though there are clear advantages to keeps in EB).

That being said, I would love to see an open world PVP version of the current maps with max level set to 80 and NPCs/events scaled appropriately.

Here ya go.

Runes are up to you. Strength, Pack, and Scholar are all good for PVE. Traveler if you don’t have anyone giving you swiftness or don’t want to run Signet of Shadows.

It seems clear that OP understands both sets work better with power, but he wants to focus on condition damage. That being said, here are my two attempts. The only differences are the item prefixes and runes.

D/D, P/P Carrion
Pros:

• More condition damage (1,740 all together, 2,005 with Corruption stacks)
• More vitality (around 7,000 HP)

Cons:

• No precision means a huge loss in potential damage from things like Backstab, Heartseeker, Unload, etc.
• Too many unnecessary stats (a thief doesn’t need 19,000 HP in PVE)

D/D, P/P Rampager
Pros:

• 60% critical chance without fury (80% with), so there is a possibility to use critical proccing sigils if desired
• 10% increased damage when Backstabbing from Rune of the Thief
• Less HP means you’ll focus more on reading enemy tells and using your dodges and evades wisely

Cons:

• Less condition damage than the Carrion setup
• Lack of ferocity means critical hits will only gain the innate 50% increase in bonus damage
• Less bleeding duration and no bleeds when struck because of the change from Krait to Thief runes

My Opinion:
If you really want to run D/D, P/P with condition damage, you’re best going for the Rampager build. You won’t be doing as much condition damage as the Carrion setup, but you’ll more than make up for that with your critical hits. Utilities are also up in the air, but I prefer those three for PVE. I understand this isn’t the most optimal build, but it could actually be quite a fun playstyle to try out.

Is this mainly for overworld PVE or for dungeons?

D/D, P/P seems like an odd combination for a condition damage setup, so I can only assume there are aesthetic or RP reasons behind the choice.

frans.8092:

I’d think hitting the door will reveal them.

No, you can use any siege while in stealth.

It would be especially helpful for stealthing people on siege. Pop refuge on a warrior with ram mastery as they’re hitting a gate and even superior AC fire can be laughed off. Less helpful when they don’t realize the stealth is actually reducing their incoming damage.

It would be nice if there was a buff that appeared alongside the stealth icon to show that you are under the effectss of the trait.

As others have said, the main reason it is underused is because of its horrible trajectory. Half the time you throw the kitten thing it goes up into the air miles away from your target. Before changing any sort of numbers with the skill, they have to make it more reliably hit a target (especially a moving one).

Thief

Dagger Off-hand

• Death Blossom (3): Unreliable evade and mediocre damage when speccing for power. Odd placement on D/D which is usually power based.
• Dancing Dagger (4): A guaranteed projectile finisher, but the projectile often flies off in random directions. It needs better tracking to become an efficient means at slowing down fleeing targets. A boost to the cripple duration or damage (increasing damage as it bounces?) would also benefit the skill.

Traps

• Overall traps are lacking because of the fact that they hit only a single target and are not throwable. They also rarely do any damaging conditions unlike ranger traps. Having additional skills (similar to the activation on Shadow Trap) that you can use on Tripwire and Needle Trap would also be nice.

Tricks

• Roll for Initiative: While the evade and initiative gain can be useful, it is a sub-par stun break compared to Shadowstep/Shadow Return. The only use it probably ever sees is as an underwater gap closer/fleeing skill.

Deception

• Shadow Refuge: I may get some hate for this, but the skill is way too powerful. The only time I ever remove this skill from my bar is when I run around in overworld PVE. It’s simply too good compared to every other thief utility, which makes it badly designed in my book.

This was caught on one of the Ready Up livestreams.

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gw2-pvp-build-UI-19.jpg

Unless they are separate for PVE and PVP, it looks like the new stats will be…

New Traveler:

• +36 to all stats (2% crit damage with 6 leftover Ferocity)
• +15% boon duration
• +10% condition duration
• +25% movement speed

Current Traveler:

• +30 to all stats (6% crit damage)
• +15% boon duration
• +10% condition duration
• +25% movement speed

Pretty much exactly what Domey said. If you’re mainly going for the +25% speed boost, it might be worth watching Runes of Speed to see if they get any changes on the 2nd and 4th rune effects.

Going with what Galsia said, Potent Poison seems to be a bit of a waste. You already have poison on Steal for 17 seconds, 5 strikes of 10 1/4 second poison on Spider Venom, and 6 3/4 seconds on your dagger auto attack. Not to mention the venom share stacking on your two thieves from your elite.

Mug or Venomous Strength would be a good change as suggested earlier.

You may also want to consider swapping Trickery 10: Instinctual Response for Thrill of the Crime if you want to keep the Perplexity runes. That little burst of swiftness can be helpful. You can use it for the standard CnD+Steal opener or you can just clear your target and give you and your allies swiftness, might, and fury on the use of Steal. Similar to Last Refuge (Shadow Arts minor trait), Instinctual Response can often put you into stealth when you don’t want or need it and you end up putting reveal on yourself unnecessarily. I generally avoid any traits that unexpectedly put you into stealth.

Just two quick things, I’m sure other people who play condi thieves can give you better advice.

Venom Share: I’m assuming you’re running this to pair up with Thieves Guild, but to be honest if you’re just looking for 1v1, you may want to just go for regen in stealth.

Perplexity: Why, exactly? You have no interrupts or stuns.

I agree that a signet would be much better than a trap.

Current Passives:

• Signet of Malice: Heal when dealing damage.
• Signet of Agility: Increased precision.
• Signet of Shadows: Increased movement speed.
• Assassin’s Signet: Increased power.
• Infiltrator’s Signet: Increased initiative regeneration.

Current Actives:

• Signet of Malice: Heal.
• Signet of Agility: Refill endurance and remove 1 condition (for nearby allies as well).
• Signet of Shadows: AOE Blind on target.
• Assassin’s Signet: +15% damage on the next five attacks.
• Infiltrator’s Signet: Shadowstep to foe.

What would we want an elite signet to have? No other signets seem to be tied to stealth, so would that rule out having stealth effects on the elite?

Possible Passives:

• Chance to strip/steal boons.
• Chance to remove/transfer conditions.
• Reduce Steal cooldown.
• Increase base initiative.

Possible Actives:

• Protection.
• Stability.
• AOE revealed on foe.
• Gain initiative (without a trait).
• Cleanse revealed.

It has always been an evade. If the tooltip doesn’t include it now, it’s simply an oversight and not a bug.

Cheechglg.8734:

A possible solution – Get rid of localisation, make international server’s and merge Eu and NA server’s for a 24 hour player base on all server’s

You say that like they have some button they can press to make this happen.

Durban what’s the point of this thread? It just looks like whining because Gandara doesn’t have 24/7 coverage masked as a suggestion thread. It’s been this way since launch. Just enjoy the fights you have while defending and stop worrying about PPT.

Not everyone chooses to stay up to play during the EU standard night-shift. For many it’s the only time they have to play. Doing anything to limit their enjoyment just wouldn’t be acceptable.

Prysin.8542:

3 things should be done;
Cannot stomp from stealth
Downed state makes you immune to blind and daze
Thief, Mesmer and Ele need to get their Downed #2/3 skills nerfed. Ele isn’t the worst of them, just annoying, but thief and mesmer ones are too strong overall.

Ele is by far the most annoying because of how their skill allows then to enter portals into keeps and towers.

If you remove stomping from stealth, you may as well remove the ability to stop with immunity and stability. A player who is in stealth to stomp has wasted skills or initiative that could otherwise save them or their teammates at some other point.

Bubbles, pulls, and interrupts still work through stealth anyway, so if you get stomped after using your downed skills the stealth doesn’t really matter.

Why do we have a second thread? Keep this garbage in the first one.