Guild Wars 2

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Still seeing a lot of s/d daredevil’s in wvw and not core s/d, weird because I though with double steal you would drop daredevil.

Only if you can land it. Plus, core S/D used to switch between S/D and SB a lot more than thieves now do. It’s a bit of an adjustment.

Same build as me, except sigils of courage and exploitation, switching between strength runes and agility runes. Although, I don’t like that in a team upper hand’s regen can block regen from an ally with several hundred healing power, so it makes don’t stop debatable. At the moment I have both RFI and upper hand.

For S/D, core is better than daredevil. Acro replaces it somewhat; you’re still out a dodge after counting improved vigour and the evade from withdraw, and you don’t have dash’s mobility. What you do have, as I said on another thread about 2 weeks ago, is with RFI+infiltrator’s arrow you can cover about the same distance as dash+arrow in 20 seconds, not counting porting in with sword or leaving a return for when you leave.

Two trait lines that do essentially the same thing is a bad idea.
- The survivability GAIN from acro PLUS DrD is less than going from neither to either.
- DrD focuses on dodging just like acro.
- Impacting Disruption is not ideal for S/D because it won’t be utilised as much, or means taking Distracting Daggers.
- Escapists absolution is great for S/D, but you have cleanse in sword 2, agility signet, and shadow step. This is already more than D/P has. Why sacrifice yet more damage for more cleanse? Let your support do their job. Plus, if needed, you have the optional Pain Response anyway with acro.
- Endurance Thief only returns 25 endurance on successful steal in PvP now.
- Dash is awkward with S/D because since the swiftness affecting movement skills change, the dash distance makes a follow up flanking strike easily avoidable.
- Dash is used by D/P for mobility and as a faster escape/disengage which it lacked compared to S/D before HoT. Sword is designed already to get in and out.
- DrD’s heal on evade is similar to Mug’s heal with 2x steal, plus Mug does damage.
- The only traits worth considering taking DrD for are Bounding Dodger and Havoc Mastery. Mug’s damage is instant rather than 7% boost and so competes with Havoc Mastery. DA gives you +10% vs condi inflicted vs Bounding Dodger, and then you get Improvisation which, while cannot be triggered twice in 20s with both steals, but it does mean to have 2 shots at it if you miss a steal. Poison on steal is also now twice as good with swindler’s equilibrium.

The only trait line that may have contested DA would be CS since you can maintain 25 stacks of might with it with permanent fury. However, Improvisation - especially without physical skills in the pool for instant recharge - is just too good.

Had a quick glance to see if the results were any different from my own. It’s as expected. I was skipping through and found one particular genius warrior, who instead of taking 2 steps to obstruct the fire behind a pillar, used gs 3, ran 8 paces and jumped up and went around the wall on Khylo, healed, came around the corner, got hit again, so jumped down, took more damage from the rifle, and then realised he could use that pillar after all, took damage while running back up toward it, then took more damage while trying to figure out how to actually stand behind it, by which time he was on about 6% health, defensive skills and healing skill already blown.

That just says it all right there. People are so bad that anything can SEEM incredibly, overly strong. Then D/P loses 1v1 up there.

A 5sec ICD across all game modes would be fine by me. I never much cared for the trait. Only use it out of necessity because other thieves do.

Tried it with Dead Eye. Prefer core S/D with DA/Trick/Acro, following the improvement to Swindler’s Equilibrium.

I take Upper Hand over Don’t Stop, because extra initiative is important and more than makes up for the fact you no longer take infiltrator’s signet, and the regen when you’re out of range from support is fair. For immob escape, you have flanking strike to dodge on the spot, and switch to SB #3 if really needed, more obviously though you have infiltrator’s return, shadow step, cleanse on agility signet/shadow step, and mainly withdraw and the new and improved roll for initiative.

Roll for initiative adds much needed mobility, as well as adding one of the many lost evades. It helps escape immobilise and cleanses other movement impairing effects, and when traveling between points, using it with about face after spamming infiltrator’s arrow, and using infiltrator’s arrow once again, will get you the same speed of travel as Daredevil with dash.

1) The stolen item skills are far more suitable.
2) The shadow step on steal is an invaluable gap closer and potential escape.
3) The instant cast of steal with sleight of hand can interrupt while you are cc’d for much needed survivability if you get caught with a stun.
4) DA with mug competes with the heal and boons that come with DE, but you can trigger them more often and when you want to, as opposed to the slow stacking of malice.
5) DA brings great utility with improvisation, and without running an elite spec, you have a smaller pool of skill types to be recharged. Additionally, extra mace skull cracks helps against DH which counters you quite heavily, and 4x fear from scourage helps to cc chain them so they can’t spam barriers in a team fight.
6) DE has some useless traits; the only real appeal is the quickness and power boost when you mark a target. Everything you would select in DA is useful.

As for not liking the shadow step on steal because it gives no escape? You can...
1) Cast infiltrator’s strike without a target, so you have the return spot, and then use steal to get in.
2) Not engage with steal, but instead save it for when it will counter something or get you the down.
3) Chain steal right after infiltrator’s strike, covering more ground, and having your return port available.

Edit: Also, I find myself using Rune of Adventure, to make up for the loss of endurance return in acro, and on activating agility signet, and reduced vigor effects. I used to play S/D without acro before HoT (10/30/0/0/30), without adventure runes. Now, I find we’ve lost just one too many dodges, making that extra dodge sorely needed.

A nice effort. Teleports are far more valuable than you have listed, though, since they can allow you to get to LoS or disengage completely to recover for a far longer duration than 66% of a dodge. There is also the question of healing, protection, stability and stun breaking. CC can also be used defensively.

You have also missed some teleports. Necro’s flesh wurm and spectral walk, thief’s infiltrator’s signet, infiltrator’s arrow and infiltrator’s return, mesmer’s phase retreat and portal, and revenant’s.. I forgot what it’s called, but it’s the assassin’s stance teleport toward the target. While teleporting toward a target may not seem like a survival skill, you’ll see skilled players use it so quite often, because it gets you out of or away from something or someone. Especially if you have a target far away from the fight, you can port toward them, but not "to" them, and be clear of any harm.

Additionally, this is only for direct damage. There is no mention of resistance or condition cleansing skills.

To be more accurate, you have to be far more general. i.e. less accurate, ironically.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Thanks for the comments everyone but I have a question:

Does anyone else agree or disagree with the 2nd point made in my post?
About how very high DPS changes not only the meta but how the game is played?

Holismith DPS, yes. As I have said, it needs to receive some damage nerfs and sustain buffs.

Dead Eye and Soulbeast… Nothing should be able to hit 22k non-crit or 107k crit or otherwise. I haven’t experienced this myself. I’ve been hit by Death’s Judgement once, and it was for 12k, similar to vault, but from the safety of ranged. I do not know if the guy was complete glass with no defensive options, or if he was running a potentially viable build, so I cannot really comment on that one.

Scourge is good at area denial unless your team has solid condi cleanse. This is strong in conquest, of course, but I didn’t mention any concern for this before, because during preview weekends no one runs support, so I have no idea if a sufficient counter is there.

We need to wait until we can see the true state of the balance until after the completed specialisations have been released and sufficient time has passed for the round-a-bout of build-polish-counter build-rebuild-polish ect. has been done, so that we can offer opinions with the overall picture illuminated.

The point about roles is correct, and I was thinking the same thing yesterday, that perhaps what ANet should do is define somewhere on their website these actual fundamental roles of Support, Bunker, Bruiser, and Burst, and when creating new specialisations, refer to these definitions and build it according to one or a hybrid of two (i.e. “Bunker” often just refers to a Support & Bunker build, because support often has to build tanky, and it’s been so long since a plain bunker was viable).

If specialisations were truly designed toward a particular role, with one or two designed purely for utility, then you would be able to say hey let’s take A (damage) with B (bunker) and C (utility) and have a bruiser. Before, with fewer specialisations (5), the “play how you want” concept did not allow for such a structure, but more are added, it allows for more “specialised” and organised trait lines, and the “play how you want” becomes what role you want based on your combination of trait lines, and based on which of the two or three trait lines designed for damage you took, or if you took all three, or which of the defensive lines you took, ect. It sounds like a huge step, and a lot of changing, but we have seen similar to this prior to HoT release when a lot of traits were moved around, so it’s not an unlikely, inconceivable, nor impossible feat by any stretch.

I haven’t tried weaver, yet, but am keen to. It looks great, and I’m sure it will be very versatile.

Holosmith felt very PvE. It was like running around with an FGS, because without traiting range, it felt like it was too squishy. That said, I still melted. That said, I never was very good at engi. The more successful ones I’ve seen have been running rifle (as was I), and rocket boots and using them to run away to reset and or heal, a lot. So, it definitely has good mobility options, but in fights it just felt too easily shut down. That said, for the damage potential it has, it needs to be easily shut down. So, I would nerf its damage and give it some more sustain.

Firebrand I didn’t try yet, and not sure if I’ll have time. I’ve not seen any of these, though. Lots of DH, still, and even a couple of core guardians. I’m interested to see what it has to offer in terms of utility and team support. I always liked guardians for support roles in PvP.

Mirage was the second one I tried, and didn’t bother to queue with it. It felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to do. It has potential for both condi and direct oriented builds, and the concept of miraging is very good, it makes a lot of new plays available, but that’s all. As an actual build, to perform a role... There wasn’t really one. It did feel like it was trying to be a thief, but it needs to be "thiefy," not "trying to BE a thief." Spellbreaker got that, hands down. Core and chronomancer stomp all over it, and, while interesting, lacking a purpose, it really isn’t fun.

Scourge, I didn’t spend much time on at all. It looked spammy, and not a very viable option for supporting. It is incredibly weak to CC, as necro has always been. Supports need to be able to deal with CC in order to perform their role. It seems like it would be more PvE-oriented.

Renegade, I didn’t try, didn’t see much of, and to be completely honest did not think much of when I saw it, which seems to be the popular opinion.

Soulbeast, I did not try. I just dislike ranger in general. I think I’ve seen a few, but I didn’t really "notice" them.

Dead Eye... Dissapointed. Awesome if you want to play sniper, but it is worse than core thief for melee oriented builds. Projectile based builds are usually shut down in PvP, and that won’t even be necessary because every Dead Eye I’ve seen has melted to any decent core thief, daredevil or spellbreaker as soon as they become visible.

Spellbreaker was fun. This is the first time I’ve ever liked warrior. It will receive a lot of negatives because it’s such a huge change to how warrior has always been played. It’s less passive, you have to think about your skills and think further ahead in terms of dealing damage and surviving. The damage is reasonable, and sensible. It has less of the "let’s just throw in some big numbers and make survivability passive," feel, and really does feel more like a thief - going for that high value target or shutting a target down, peeling away from the fight to go for rangers/snipers. Full counter is an excellent concept, the only issue I foresee is that it doesn’t have a thief’s mobility, and they are similar, so they might never get a time to shine. But, a lot of new things are out and we’ve yet to see a lot of what will be tried, so at this point, who really knows?

I’m finding spellbreaker to be quite enjoyable, and I’ve never liked warrior before. I’m using D/D + Rifle, with Strength, Defense and Spellbreaker (duh), with the new heal, Bull’s Charge (yes, you read it right), Balanced Stance, Endure Pain, and Rampage.

The survivability is fair, the damage people claim is low but I find it hits decently, similar to thief (not dead eye) which is what Spellbreaker actually feels similar to. Classes designed to get kills don’t usually have skills that hit extremely high, they are good at chaining abilities and landing decent hits, not necessarily trying to land a gimmick shot.

Offhand dagger brings the burst and 5 is fair cleave, and invaluable defense against the dead eyes, dragon hunters and pewpew rangers. It lacks mobility, so rifle is needed for classes like thief than can dart in and out, and it’s good single target damage from ranged. Bull’s charge helps a lot; it’s very versatile, much like all skills thieves take. It can engage, damage, escape, or interrupt. It’s good to follow up with 4 or get to those pesky dead eyes and show them they should go back to core thief.

Without a defensive weapon though, you really need to learn to use full counter. It brings a very new concept to warriors, because it requires this thing called timing. Yup, this elite spec requires you to think on warrior! It’s brilliant, and about time the devs went in that direction. You need the new heal for cleanse, because while you can deal with conditions fairly well with a 27k health pool, you lack cleanse, and that heal is all you have. Plus, it’s a huge heal, which is really needed with marauder warrior.

No Discipline? Tried it, didn’t work as well as Strength and Defense. Defense brings you vigor and stances. You could take discipline, sure, and it would work ok, but this build doesn’t really need fast hands, and the burst skills aren’t that great, plus you want to ensure you always keep 1 bar full for full counter on demand. Kill shot is too telegraphed and the dagger burst skill is alright for the boon strip to chain into an interrupt, but that’s all. It’s utility, not damage. Strength is needed for the GM that gives you back endurance on might gain, which you get often with the AA chain of dagger main hand. Combine that with reckless dodge, (which I still disagree with) and you’re throwing damage out everywhere, and on that note, is why you take Defense. The vigor with the stances really adds to your endurance as well, synergising with dagger AA and Strength GM. Of course, the healing and the stance’s usual effects add more much needed survivability, even if the minor healing trait is significantly lessened with only level 1 burst skills available.

It is essentially rifle thief. Ironic eh? Because the actual rifle thief is awful.

Nice PvE build.

With regards to the malice generation speed, I did think it was too slow to generate to really get the benefit of the traits. Especially when considering it only builds when attacking one particular target. It is also disappointing that it only increases your damage against that target, because there is a trait which allows you to make your mark deal less damage to you, which I had thought very useful because it would enable you to mark say, a berserk warrior or another thief that poses a threat to you, while attacking a different target altogether with your team.

The utility skills I think are very good, they just don’t fit with the rifle theme. They would be more suited to a melee role, while the trait line itself is heavily geared toward rifle (or any strong long ranged weapon (of which there is only rifle)).

The elite skill is interesting, and I was initially keen to give it a go, but having actually slotted it, it’s like a light switch went on, and I realised it’s really not deserving of an elite skill slot. If, for example it was a utility skill, it would be competing with Blinding Powder for D/P. 2 charges countering reveal, but with a cast time, vs no cast time, blast finisher and AoE blind. Blinding Powder wins. In fact, if Blinding Powder was an elite, I can see it being picked over Basilisk Venom. For other weapon-set builds, it doesn’t break stuns nor does it offer any mobility, so it would lose to skills like Shadow Step, Roll for Initiative and even Infiltrator’s Signet. The Dead Eye elite skill only offers a brief defense against a counter to our stealth. If thief ever needs to slot it, it is in a very, very bad place indeed. Until then, it is not worth taking. It needs to offer more.

The heal skill is very nice. I’m not sure I will have need of it, personally, but it is great to know it is there as an option, and I’m sure it will see use in some builds.

I stand by my previous comments about reverting Dead Eye’s Mark to shadow stepping and using the stolen item skills, while giving players the option to trait it into a non-shadow stepping buff-stealing ability for rifle or P/P builds.

Here’s an idea:
1. Revert Mark to have the same functionality as Steal, such that it retains its shadow step and acquires the same stolen skills, and
2. Upon taking the Dead Eye elite spec, Steal gains the marking and malice functionality, such that it marks your target and allows you to stack malice, but does not alter remove anything that is already there (shadow step and current stolen items), then...
3. Sniper’s Cover trait is a clear choice for rifle users and those wanting to built toward the sniper style. Add the effect to make steal no longer shadow step you, and instead steal buffs instead of "items."

Boom. It’s viable for all weapon sets, not just rifle, as it should be.

Edit: Edited for clarification. Also, I am one that did not want rifle as a weapon, but I was optimistic. It seems alright for those that want to snipe, but as I said before, Dead Eye only really works for rifle. It’s for ranged damage and short bow isn’t a long ranged weapon, and quite often better used closer to melee range. I wanted off-hand sword or something involving "shadow magic." Rifle came with Shadow magic but... No. It was not what I imagined and does not fit the theme at all. A gun couldn’t be further from mage-like.

Dead Eye is not a 1v1 trait line. The new mark does not compare to steal at all. It has a cast time, it does not shadow step you, the new skills are designed to buff you and weaken the target so that you can do it from ranged. Makes sense, I know, but it pretty much forces you into rifle.

With daredevil, it wasn’t the most innovative change to a profession mechanic - in fact, there was no change, the profession mechanic was a trait choice to change your dodge as opposed to one that became integrated into your existing mechanic like other classes got. However, you at least got to choose what weapon set you wanted with it, because all felt workable.

With Dead Eye, it’s too much designed toward the use of the rifle. It’s nice to have a profession mechanic change, but it feels as though there is no freedom. If you want to melee, you have better options in Daredevil and core.

There have been a few viable PvP builds without trickery in the past. Back in the early days of GW2 when you had the ’carry’ role, which was a glass burster that defended your bunker from being spawn camped or ganked between points. Obviously, it was usually a thief, and that build had two variants: 25/30/0/0/15, and 25/30/15/0/0. A year or two later there was also a viable S/D build which ran 10/30/0/30/0. There were also other non-trickery builds (which were actually more common than 30 trickery) which were just not competitive.

That said, today, you are right that the skills are balanced for an extra 3 initiative and 2 initiative returned on a successful steal. I don’t think the devs did so with that in mind, though, because it wasn’t always necessary. The design of thief is such that it has skills to use as and when they are needed, but it cannot do so forever. It needs to manage use, thereof. With the changes to traits and skills, introduction of new conditions and now new weapon bars and trait lines, various circumstances force you to blow initiative just to get past a defense or stay alive before you’ve even really engaged. This is good, of course, it makes for fun and interactive gameplay, but it does force you into trickery.

The proposed solution is the obvious one, and it was requested a lot during the major overhaul before heart of thorns was released, when a lot of classes were having numerous traits made baseline - in some cases even the more powerful traits.

I disagree about Dead Eye requiring Trickery, though. It looks designed to replace Trickery for a ranged-focused build, and there is a very strong looking utility skill which can return up to 5 (or 7 if traited) initiative, along with recharging mark and breaking stun on a 30 (I think) second cool down. Most of thief’s damage comes from auto attack - at least, in power builds. The skills using initiative were always used primarily for defense, gap closing or finishing. If you’re ranging, you’re going to have less need of those abilities, and if you look at them on the wiki (bearing in mind they are of course subject to change), at the moment, most of them have the same damage as auto attack; it’s just the effect that is different. Melee builds, however, that wish to take Dead Eye will still need to take Trickery to be competitive.

Thanks for posting and getting this issue noticed! It got fixed. I’m back to being keen to try out S/D with Dead Eye.

My tests thus far have indicated that, while CS with strength runes, sigil of courage and assassin’s fury is the best for damage, the nerf to endurance return from agility signet makes you need another dodge in the build, and I’m not using Daredevil. So, I feel forced into Rune of the Adventure. It actually plays nice, but means switching traits around, resulting in DA being better since without 25 might stacks and +5%, damage becomes around the same, and 2x mug with 1x improv is very nice.

Improv is still useful with swindler’s for the recharge factor, especially when running core thief since there are less skill types in the pool. 4x ecto plasms or mace skull cracks is also attractive.

The tough decision will be whether or not Dead Eye is worth more than DA. There is some brilliant synergy to be had there with S/D. It brings some defense, a lot of offense, and a utility skill which instantly recharges steal/mark. The potential problems are worth vs. improv+mug, and the fact that it seems Dead Eye steal will not shadow step you. An instant ranged daze sounds nice and preferable in some scenarios e.g. DH traps, static fields or a general cluster of aoe.

I see ANet gave the mark the same CD as steal with trickery, but trickery will still be needed for an S/D or D/P build due to the defensive daze, and the (especially now for S/D!) initiative return when you use steal thanks to the first minor trait.

Edit: I don’t think anyone has mentioned or perhaps even noticed yet, but core thief with withdraw and roll for initiative (which is now note-worthy with its much needed CD reduction) can cover the same amount of ground as dash over about 20 seconds, not counting infiltrator’s return for a head start of infiltrator’s strike at the end. The lack of stealth remains a weakness, but with 2 charges of reveal-proof stealth as an elite with Dead Eye, that might be getting addressed.

I agree in part. Reckless dodge, bounding dodger and lotus training are bad by design. Caltrops on dodge is different, but it should really be "on successful evade," as with anything that is going to deal damage. Just spamming a defensive skill should not be rewarding, it should be clearly noticeable as bad, which would simply be: you gained nothing except for putting your defenses on cool down/recharge.

Vault is not the same as the daredevil GM traits, and there are a lot of skills that damage at the end of an evade, across all classes... Death blossom, burning speed, ranger’s S/D, ranger’s GS, flanking strike. There are also skills that deal damage after or during a block. If you have a problem with the way vault works, that is a separate issue.

Edit: Vault evade frame ends as they begin to descend, which is also noticeable by the blue glow ending. Death blossom isn’t evading when the animation reaches peak height. There are plenty of defensive skills, as mentioned already.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Swindler-s-Equilibrium-a-bug/first#post6683718

Impact.2780:

If swindler’s equilibrium could be made to only activate when steal is already on cool down, that would be great. Otherwise, it promotes opening with steal, which is predictable, and it cannot be easily judged to know when swindler’s is ready to be used.

It’s a nice change, and could be an improvement if adjusted such that it can’t be wasted. Unfortunately as it stands, the previous version of the trait was measurable; you could see it working, and use it without it being wasted, while this version is the opposite. It needs to be improved thus, to compete with improvisation, and give sword builds a chance to come back.

If swindler’s equilibrium could be made to only activate when steal is already on cool down, that would be great. Otherwise, it promotes opening with steal, which is predictable, and it cannot be easily judged to know when swindler’s is ready to be used.

It’s a nice change, and could be an improvement if adjusted such that it can’t be wasted. Unfortunately as it stands, the previous version of the trait was measurable; you could see it working, and use it without it being wasted, while this version is the opposite. It needs to be improved thus, to compete with improvisation, and give sword builds a chance to come back.

Assassin’s fury with no quater synergises nicely with strength runes and the added boon duration now found in acrobatics. Now when you’re done shortbowing, you can jump in with 25 stacks of might. It’s a nice change. It makes critical strikes more worth it for sword, whereas deadly arts always favoured DP with its 10% modifer requiring a condition to be applied.

The 200ms removal from infiltrator’s return is unnoticeable. When they made it have a cast time they said it would not be noticeable for usage, and is only there to prevent use while cc’d. There is still a noticeable delay. At least they made flanking strikes unblockable so larcenous can be used as it was before they split the skill. Swiftness no longer affecting flanking strikes still hurts a lot, though.

Bountiful theft removed whole stacks, granting you and allies a single boon from those removed stacks. Larcenous applied the full removed stack to yourself.

Both are completely different from priority.

Rickster.8752:

One or the other. It is very overpowered.

So either headshot should have a cast time (maybe 0.75 seconds to add counter play) or PI should just do about 25-50% less damage.

Things are really not fun.

Time to act.

Bugged since it was added. It states it doesn’t crit. It actually crits, it just doesn’t do the critical attack visual when it does. That’s how it ranges from 1.8k to 4.5k.

A bug should be fixed. So essentially, I agree. Nerf it.

Mmmm case and point: my last half a dozen games. Lost 18 for 2 DH being 2v1 a condi thief all match, another with 2 longbow druids insisting they are God’s gift running builds that are 100% countered by enemy comps. More losses from general lack of skill and or game knowledge. Double thief almost every match, and the other is beyond awful 95% of the time. Last game actually won despite the pistol thief literally only using dodge and auto attack, and gained a whopping 8 points after dropping over 50.

One day pretty much undid and entire week of carefully picking the time of day to queue, and queue dodging numerous bads. I’m pretty much trading my rating for the 20g reward chests before the season end, but it’s irritating nonetheless.

Excuse what appears to be me moaning. This is the simplest way to paint the picture that this system’s ability to accurately predict the outcome of a match is either non-existent, or the majority of players are just so random in what they do that it is impossible to predict what they are going to pull. Either way, the leaderboards have to be based on what the case actually is, not what it should be if everything was predictable and or working as intended.

That all said, I’d trade season 5, any subsequent season, and any improvements thereof, for the competitive scene - i.e. weekly+ tournaments - back. Any news on that?

Evan Lesh.3295:

If point gains were arbitrary as you describe, then there would be no upper bound on MMR, and you would see people who play a lot with 10k rating at the top of the leaderboard. This is not accurate and just takes us back to seasons 1-4.

The reason you are gaining very little is because you are expected to win all those matches and your rating is already accurate. When you lose a match you are expected to win, you take a decent hit. Your history shows that you can easily maintain your rating, which is good. If you’re already one of the best players, why do you need your rating to continually rise?

I can understand the argument that high-skilled players might want some sense of progression past being number 1, but that is outside the scope of MMR. This is one of the reasons you consistently get more rewards while highly rated.

If that is indeed the intended design, I’m sorry to say the system gets it wrong often. The system clearly does not account for counter comps, afkers, d/cs or ragequitters who come back before match end, and the big one - people who just don’t know what they are doing (which could be an MMR issue to be fixed gradually with the soft-resets between seasons, but I’m not so sure how much weight MMR really plays in this new system). This is based on just seeing them play, and then getting hit hard when losing as a result. I did not think it would work this way because of the engine trying to force a 50% win:lose ratio, and on that note, how is an engine which does this also calculate that one should be winning all his games?

Sounds like you’ve been playing on the beta servers.

Wait.. I’m on that server.

The fire was where the Mystic Forge used to be. It was removed recently, relatively speaking.

…can we have the absent-reason removed Mystic Forge, added back in Heart of the Mists…?

Unless of course, it is the big change planned for season 5!

2016 ranger pet better bunker than guardian confirmed

Gaile Gray.6029:

Second, in the next few weeks we’ll be running a poll that asks if you’d like to see PvP Leagues switch to a solo/duo queue only system, rather than allowing rosters of any size (1 through 5 players). This is potentially a very big change for PvP, so we wanted to get it on your radar ahead of time so you can ruminate, discuss it together now, and then share your opinion on the poll when it is available.

Here is a potentially more favourable idea:

• Leaved Ranked as it is, like the old Team queue.
• Add a second Ranked queue for solo players ONLY, like the old Solo queue. During off-season, both Ranked Team, and Ranked Solo become Unranked Team and Unranked Solo, respectively. This will not “undo” the recent popular change to keep Ranked queue open during off-season, because the main reason for that was to have a queue without Spirit Watch, Skyhammer, and beta maps remain available, and this will remain the case for the Unranked Team and Unranked Solo queues during off-seasons.
• Remove the non-“competitive-approved”maps from Unranked and re-name it “Casual/Beta,” where players can go to play on the beta maps and non-competitive, exclusively (Spirit Watch, Skyhammer, Revenge of the Capricorn, Collosium).

Thieves are now less stealthy. GG.

Profession Skills
Thief
Fixed the sound effect of the short bow’s arrow release for all thief skills.

Rotate = leave a point and go somewhere else where you can be useful.
Rotate to: survive, kill, capture (priority order depends on role).

Where to go? Depends on role.(in order of priority)
DPS: To be saved, to kill out of position/over-extender, to +1 to quick kill/quick win point.
Team fighter: To be saved, to save ally, to ill out of position/over-extender, to +1 to quickly win/hold a point.
Support: To be saved, to save ally, to secure win in active fight, to support active or soon-to-be team fight.

Of course, if more than two of the above reasons for rotating can be achieved in a single rotation, then that is the best one to make. And this is basics. There are also respawns, enemy positions, counter-rotations, matchups etc. to be considered.

1 Black Lion Claim ticket per subsequent legendary division completed? Skins seems to be a big driver even when the skin isn’t even a nice one. This way it doesn’t require ANet to make anything, really.

Left myself in queue in spectate in a custom arena, went out, came back. Still in queue, over 60mins now. Had some fun scrims last night so was really feeling like trying some things out in ranked queue today. Unranked, yeah, been there. Not a great fan of capricorn all the time, would like a different map from time to time, and of course the match quality is actually still better in ranked. Sure you get annoyed with the 1 guy whose brain got stuck at the loading screen, but at least you’re not one-shotting most and wondering why it’s a close game.

Edit: I do miss the EU matches =[

Yeah another of these threads. Not seen any this season, surprisingly. It’s weekend and I can’t get a match for these queue times. Over 30mins, by which time I lose interest. I actually watched myself get logged out for inactivity before I got a match. This is something that really needs to be addressed with each matchmaking algorithm change... It’s going to continue to get worse unless addressed ASAP because it makes people stop queuing and even quit altogether.

Perhaps the lack of such threads is indicative that most of the people affected by absurd queue times have already moved on, or just go elsewhere after reaching legendary.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Implement 1-to-1 rally policy, similar to WvW. This means that only 1 player would rally per enemy killed, rather than up to 5. Would likely be the downed ally closest to the enemy player.

Not sure on this one. This could make or break… It is a good idea for sure since it would force players to remain cautious after getting a down, minding the fact that only one of them can afford to drop to secure the finish/kill. Sounds good for competitive play, but would severely restrict one’s carrying ability in pug queue.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Cap the range at which someone can rally.

It’s absurd that this is even up for discussion. It should have been done since day 1.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Bring back PvE-downstate policy

Potentially hurts the risk vs reward for the res, but on the other hand does someone deserve to be revived to a good health level when they are dropping repetitively? It could be a boon to teams running more risk as opposed to those running safer, sustain, support and revive oriented builds and strategies. I’d say yes.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Shorten revive/downed “invuln” buff.

Shorten? No. Get rid of it entirely? Yes. If you can start ressing and stomping a down instantly, you should be able to start cleaving it instantly. Being knocked down makes you vulnerable, not temporarily immortal. If that was the case, we should all be stumbling over onto our backs and jumping back up to avoid burst and save a dodge. This is also especially annoying for Impact Strike’s 3rd hit…

Josh Davis.6015:

• Reduce healing per tick when rezzing.

Yes, or make the downed player take increased damage through an added status effect. It depends on how you want it to be:

• Just plain slower to revive = reduce healing per tick.
• Same speed when not being attacked, while balancing damage vs healing = status effect to make incoming damage increased for the downed player.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Further reduce downstate HP

Maybe a bit. This isn’t really the problem, so fixing by tweaking this may only be a temporary solution.

Josh Davis.6015:

• Adjust outlier revive skills (Function Gyro)

Yes. Make them only in effect when the player themself is ressing, and taking such skills should be at the cost of something significant.

Just increase the speed of rotating it left and right, possibly also having it turn while holding the button down until you release it. The firing speed is fine.

Passive defense is meant to counter active defense because skill and timing matters.

Hi we (TFS) are looking for a Mesmer to join us for AGs.

Contact:

• Impact.2870, or
• ima kong f(u) ninja.3052
  Via in game whisper or mail.

Our Team:

• Impact (Daredevil; alt Reaper)
• Hanyu (Rev; alt Scrapper)
• Fred (Druid; alt DH)
• Borg (Chrono)
• Frisky (DH; alt Tempest)
  We currently play Monday, Wednesday and Sunday 8pm-11pm EST. This can always be changed to suit everyone!

We are looking for a Mesmer who will:

• Initially be a substitute for our current Mesmer whose schedule has become difficult to work with for our weekly AGs. This could always change, situations depending, especially if you can play multiple classes.
• Be willing to use Discord and possibly, sometimes TS.
• Have strong individual ability including map awareness and communication, and be willing to learn and improve with us both individually and as a team.
• Ideally be able to play at least one other class at a good level (preferably DH or Warrior).

Time a skill for before they land, not after they land. Aim to hit the non-evade frame during the skill, not the gap between that and the next evade, which will almost always result in an "evaded!" PvP is awkward to learn in atm, because the skill gaps are so huge. You can reliably land something vs a class for days, then go against someone that is actually good at it and miss everything resulting in losing when normally you wouldn’t have done that, you’ve just been "trained to" by the bads.

It’s an easy fix too. Instead of just trying to port to the trap/player location in one shadow step, if that fails try to do it in a smaller step, and if that fails try to take a step toward it the using NPC pathing algorithm, subtract the distance traveled by the successful method, and then repeat for the remaining range.

Ithilwen.1529:

I might be mistaking the source of the interrupt. It is at least concurrent with [“Rise”] a lot of the time.

Minions don’t fear… Yet, every time you see Rise… You get feared…

Very puzzling indeed.

Unless… Necromancers apply fear… Rise is only present with Necromancers…

Could it, perhaps be concurrent with Necromancers?

CAPE.

/15 chars/

You have some 1v1 potential when you don’t build to outrun and decap by spamming dodge. You also have some more team fight presence because your evade hurts. Just get into the habbit of switching from aggressive to defensive earlier... Which is around the same time you would have done so in metas before HoT anyway. Of course, the better you time those evades and the better you apply that extra damage potential, the less pressure they will be able to put out. It all adds up.

Bound is actually the key trait here for many reasons. In addition to the things above, it also allows you to remain an "unwise focus target" because you can drop that target on your head with stealth so easily. Before HoT this was done with HS in BP. Of course now, that’s harder to pull off with all the cc spam. Bound, is of course, a leap with an evade frame for the duration. The only thing that can interrupt it is an on-hit cc effect like static aura, static field, nightmare rune #6 and some of those mind-numbingly stupid traits like eye for an eye.

Do you still need to back out after a few hits and wait for a good time to jump in? Usually, yes. But hasn’t this always been the case? That being said, the added support strength can allow you to hang in there a bit longer if you have someone on the ropes. The point is though, at least you retain that stealth back-out ability, which also begs the question, "Is the thief still in this fight?" And provides that window for easy re-positioning. The ability thieves had before HoT wasn’t lost, it just isn’t being utilized.

During the first season, against any decent group, you had no choice really but to run most of the time (but to be fair, again, in that case why spec for it instead of at least try to be effective or just re-roll?) It’s not the first season anymore.

Still searching.

paShadoWn.5723:

Welp i do travel timelines often and have SERIOUS brain damage so... after the testing i did now, yep it doesnt changes.

The point of tedious run through intro is still here tho. Why not enable Heart button right on start?

Have a friend go to a custom arena and right click Join in PvP, then leave the match. Tada, Heart of the Mists.

The suggestion makes sense, but ANet doesn’t do things like this, else they’d already have done it. They are more concerned with doing the opposite of what is needed.

The most recent example we found yesterday - nothing to do in HotM, everyone is asking for something to do. Something we were doing was just roaming the map with gliders since you can get to that island to the north you aren’t meant to be able to reach. Oh no, they have found something to occupy themselves? Instead of a meaningful, helpful patch, they put a barrier up so we can’t go there anymore.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Stomping is good if you can’t out cleave the revive attempts and are able to secure it without dying or getting interrupted.
Cleaving is better if doable because you get to burn the health and resources of those trying to revive.

How to encourage it...........................

......................Bring back and promote active stability skills and get rid of the passive nonsense.

Ahoy!

We were a group of PvPists that have banded together with the intent to form a team to compete in AG and hopefully ESL.

We’ve gradually built our roster to a 4-man, but unfortunately have been having bad luck finding that both good-fitting and reliable 5th player to complete our roster.

If that’s you, and you’re a Tempest, then give us a shout!

We are also looking for a strong damage roamer, ideally a Revenant to replace a Mesmer or Thief. The damage roamer will be a sub to cover one of our two current damage dealers.

With that said, our comp is:

• Cleric Tempest (LF)
• Mender Druid
• Marauder/Paladin Scrapper
• Carrion Chronomancer
• Marauder Daredevil

The ideal candidate(s) will posses the ability to…
…Know what they need to posses the ability to do, and of course posses that ability, or at least to a workable degree coupled with a keeness to learn!

We currently play on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday nights from 8pm to 11pm EST. We are able to change days if need be.

Contacts:
Impact.2780
ima kong (f+u) ninja.3052

We answer all whispers we see so if we don’t reply, do please ping us a mail because we would either be unable to at that time, or be AFK. Do of course feel free to ping a mail if we’re not online at the time, as well.

Yes, it’s you. You are bad.
If you’re bad, you’re bad.
If you not bad, but have bads, then they all say you’re bad, and they form a majority opinion.
So, the forums can either tell you you’re bad, or tell you they have no way of discerning it from a paragraph of text.

You could write an essay, detailing your actions in general in terms of rotations and conduct in team fights, and receive reviews, but then, how do you know those who review it aren’t the bads that just say you’re bad? How can you tell, unless you have them also write an essay? But then how will you know their reviewer isn’t a bad? Will you review it? But then you’re going in circles.

...Let’s just stick to complaining about each other!

This might matter if there weren’t just as many players in diamond - even legendary - that are just as bad as those in emerald/sapphire. Complaining about divisions vs divisions in matchmaking is moot. The real problem matchmaking faces lies much deeper, or, as ability rises, in the availability and population of players of similar ability.

Could it be the issue has been with MMR this whole time? Not matchmaking.

Let’s ditch the rank 10 req to enter ranked, and replace it with an IQ test which is used to determine your minimum and maximum MMR for the season, and reset it to the middle of that range.