Showing Posts For Kaon.7192:

Mystic Forge Superior Runes/Sigils

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

How about allowing us to Mystic Forge 4 Superior Runes/Sigils to receive a random Superior Rune/Sigil in return? In a similar manner as we already can with Major Runes/Sigils.

I think this would give Superior Runes/Sigils a much better baseline price and keep the prices of the most desirable ones in check.

Current price disparity is a bit ridiculous at 10g+ for the most desirable ones and less than 1s for the least desirable ones. To put that in perspective, even most major Runes/Sigils cost 4s+ precisely because they have a chance of returning a random Superior Rune/Sigil in the MF.

Only 10 Daily Achivements?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Is a simple reassurance along the lines of “we’ve heard your concerns about the new dailies and are currently discussing this internally” too much to ask for on a thread with over 5 pages of replies?

Mystic Forge Superior Runes/Sigils

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

How about allowing us to Mystic Forge 4 Superior Runes/Sigils to receive a random Superior Rune/Sigil in return? In a similar manner as we already can with Major Runes/Sigils.

I think this would give Superior Runes/Sigils a much better baseline price and keep the prices of the most desirable ones in check.

Current price disparity is a bit ridiculous at 10g+ for the most desirable ones and less than 1s for the least desirable ones. To put that in perspective, even most major Runes/Sigils cost 4s+ precisely because they have a chance of returning a random Superior Rune/Sigil in the MF.

who is famous theif player

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Caed is the top Thief player I know by a large margin.

He still streams on Twitch once in a while so you can see exactly how he handles every situation, including the ones with unfavorable results. Watching him live is a much better learning experience than watching someone bragging on and on about impressively looking, but heavily filtered “big plays”.

Only 10 Daily Achivements?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Also, if you plan on removing the permanent daily items (like gatherer) and make them a part of the random rotation, please change the max # of dailies required to something a bit lower as well.

Only 10 Daily Achivements?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

What the new combined dailies system should have been like:

Have at least 8 dailies from each of the 3 game modes so players can complete their daily by playing exclusively the gamemode they want, and have the option of completing it faster if they want to mix and match game modes.

This current implementation is a huge step backwards IMO. The old system at least showed the bare minimum of respect for players’ freedom to play the way they want due to the sheer number of options available to complete the daily.

Trying to manipulate players into playing the way YOU want is not going to work out well in the long term. In fact, even in the short term it will impact your player retention rates.

Keep a close eye on those login/daily completion stats, ANet. Hopefully you can realize what a horrible decision this was before it’s too late.

Likely, one of the reasons it was streamlined is because many people were unhappy because they felt the need to do every Daily offered. It is too bad for the rest of the population.

This should be a non-issue for those people now since there is now a cap on achievement points from dailies. The people who feel the need to do every Daily offered should have long since reached that cap by now.

Even if this wasn’t the case, I don’t see how it is acceptable to degrade everybody else’s gaming experience for those few players. It doesn’t make sense from a ethical or business standpoint.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Only 10 Daily Achivements?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

What the new combined dailies system should have been like:

Have at least 8 dailies from each of the 3 game modes so players can complete their daily by playing exclusively the gamemode they want, and have the option of completing it faster if they want to mix and match game modes.

This current implementation is a huge step backwards IMO. The old system at least showed the bare minimum of respect for players’ freedom to play the way they want due to the sheer number of options available to complete the daily.

Trying to manipulate players into playing the way YOU want is not going to work out well in the long term. In fact, even in the short term it will impact your player retention rates.

Keep a close eye on those login/daily completion stats, ANet. Hopefully you can realize what a horrible decision this was before it’s too late.

No longer possible to complete daily in sPvP?

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Seems like the new daily achievement combines PvE and PvP categories, but there are only 2 sPvP achievements on the list and you still need 5 to complete it…

Am I missing something?

Stealthless - S/P and SB

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

“When it’s gotta be done it’s gotta be done you know its gotta be done.”

Epic commentary lol.

I’ve been running P/W for a bit now and run a 10/30/0/0/30 with Ogres and it’s definitely a lot of fun. The burst is pretty sweet and can melt most non-heavy glass builds from full HP in the time it takes for BW to wear off as long as a Haste procs (which is most of the time on the initial burst).

In my experience so far, with S/P you can afford a bit more margin of error in-battle than the same build with D/P because of the built in PW evasion and Infil Return, but in return you have a much lower chance to escape if you mess up because of the lack of Stealth from weapon skills.

Facing Condi Bunkers and/or multiple high burst classes at the same time are the biggest problems for me with this build because I have min Armor and HP, and have only Infil Return and Shadow Return as condi-removals. Although neither are unwinnable if you play your cards right. A good heal interrupt after landing your burst can seal the deal against most condi-bunkers and body cleaving with PW can melt the other glassies if they dare to res.

Stay far, far away from zergs though… I swear every time I go zerging with this build I just end up as rally fodder for the enemy.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Min. 1% price-difference

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Price agility in the current system is unnecessarily slowed down by this lack of a minimal increment, which reduces the probability that an item is near equilibrium at a given time.

And when prices are not near equilibrium, the consideration I raised remains a real issue.

As such I feel minimal increments are still necessary even without a relisting fee.

You are correct in saying that the lack of a minimum increment isn’t what’s currently slowing down price agility. What’s slowing it down is the penalty of 5% of the listing price instituted if you wanted to re-list your item for a lower price.

If that re-listing fee was removed price agility would be increased and prices would reach equilibrium faster. If the re-listing fees are removed, the discussion of a minimum increment, above 1c, is no longer necessary.

Hmm I’m sorry if I wasn’t being clear in my wording but I meant the exact opposite.

Lack of a minimal increment IS slowing down price agility because there is no incentive to undercut any more than the minimal increment.

Even without a relisting fee the most rational thing to do is undercut by 1c on ANY item, because the only factor that affects Fill Time of an order the Listing Time: how much you undercut does not factor into the equation at all as long as you undercut. And this results in an extremely slow 1c by 1c bidding process towards equilibrium on any highly priced item, and will remain so even without the 5% relisting fee. This is why a minimal increment would still be beneficial in increasing price agility.

What I agree with you on is that 5% relisting fee is ALSO slowing down price agility.

What I’m trying to say is we should address both of these factors slowing down the market instead of just tackling one and calling it a day.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Min. 1% price-difference

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Regarding equilibrium price and assuming this is something desirable, what if the listing fee were simply removed for re-listing items? E.g. if you have a Dusk listed for 800g and someone lists it for 799g99s99c, you could click a button to re-list your Dusk for 799g99s98c without having to remove it and pay the additional listing fee. This might quickly drive prices to the aforementioned equilibrium. It would also reduce the significance of undercutting as people would effectively be forced to list their item at the lowest price at which they are really willing to sell it. It would also probably be simpler to implement something like this than calculating and setting a minimum price increment. It also would not prevent anyone from asking or bidding at exactly the price they want. Not sure if it would result in a bunch of extra TP server processing though as people flip back and forth undercutting their way to equilibrium. But it would be simple enough to implement a timer to prevent re-listing too frequently, e.g. once per minute.

Free re-listing might also get some of the lingering junk off the TP as people could re-list for free rather than leave it there in hopes that something they listed in a falling market will eventually get sell.

There are probably a bunch of holes in this idea, for which I will blame not enough coffee yet this morning…

Just to touch on this. If you were to implement free price changes to combat undercutters, you open Pandora’s Box. TP players would start Price Wars with each other, and the effects on the economy could be devastating. There wouldn’t be movement to price equilibrium, but rather you’d see a destabilizing of prices. It would be a contest to see which seller would be screwed the most.

Actually this Price War you speak of will not continue for very long past the equilibrium price, because by definition, at the equilibrium price point, demand will be able to meet supply. Any further Price Warring will only last until sellers realize that the market demand is outpacing their supply of goods, and that they’re loosing out on potential profit that could be realized naturally by market demand.

Min. 1% price-difference

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

The change suggested by William Bradley Knight would simply turn the Last List First Fill system we have right now into a Last Relist First Fill system, that still benefits TP bots/notification users at the expense of regular buyers and sellers. Again, it’s admittedly better than the status quo where even relisting is prohibitively costly and slows the convergence to equilibrium price, but ideally I’d like to see a solution that addresses the other fundamental problem as well.

This is true, but the point that you’re missing is:

  • Once prices reach equilibrium, the benefits of undercutting no longer exist because Buyers and Sellers have reached a mutually beneficial price for an item. It’s only a Last Relist / First Fill state until the price reaches equilibrium.

Currently, it’s exceedingly beneficial for new sellers to undercut, especially on high valued items, because the new seller KNOWS it will cost the old seller an additional 5% to pull his listing and undercut him in return. This new seller gets to jump ahead in line for virtually the same price. The only risk this new seller has is being undercut by another new seller.

In either William Bradley Knight’s, or my model, undercutting is discouraged by pushing the price to equilibrium. His model does it in a manner that allows endless undercutting by everyone “for free”. My model associates an increased cost to do so.

The equilibrium point is the point where the Supply and Demand curves cross. It’s the point where the quantity of items buyers want equals the quantity of items sellers are willing to sell.

If there is a sudden increase in Demand for an item, the price will push up to accommodate for it. If there is a sudden increase in Supply of an item, the price will push down.

William’s model actually does this better than mine by making the Sell Listing side of the equation act more like the Buy Order side. Currently, there is no real penalty for outbidding someone with a higher Buy Order, outside of a little bit more money, but there Buyer is already willing to pay that, so it’s a moot point. Currently, on the Sell Listing side, there is the penalty of an additional 5% of the Sell Listing to lower your price. His model removes that penalty and is the reason his model works better to push the price to equilibrium faster than mine.

I see your point and agree that at equilibrium, the consideration I raised is moot. However, having unlimited chances to undercut is still no guarantee that prices will reach equilibrium at a reasonable pace, especially when there is no incentive to undercut more than 1c, because the only factor that affects Fill Time is Listing Time, or Relisting Time in the new system.

Price agility in the current system is unnecessarily slowed down by this lack of a minimal increment, which reduces the probability that an item is near equilibrium at a given time.

And when prices are not near equilibrium, the consideration I raised remains a real issue.

As such I feel minimal increments are still necessary even without a relisting fee.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Min. 1% price-difference

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Your price increments are no more or less arbitrary than any other static increment, such as 1c (as it is now) or 1% (as has been suggest).

Using your 10g and below increment as an example:

  • A 10g Sell Listing has a 10s Listing Fee, or 1% of the Sell Listing
  • A 1g00s01c Sell Listing has a 10s Listing Fee, or 9.9999999% of the Sell Listing

I’m not sure if I follow your thinking here, but let me give it a shot:

You seem to be seeing the mandatory increments in this system as a form of “Pay to Undercut”, correct? I suppose that is a valid way of looking at it, so I will also refer to it as such for the rest of this post. But I wouldn’t agree that it is no less arbitrary than a 1c increment across all price points.

While it’s not FULLY dynamic as some of the other suggestions (I’ll get to why a fully dynamic system isn’t feasible in a moment), the system I proposed is definitely less arbitrary than a static 1c “cost to undercut” across all price points.

In the current system, the relative cost to undercut does not have a lower bound, this leads to the fundamental problem I discussed in my previous post (any later listing can bypass the FIFO queue at a relative cost that approaches 0 as the price of an item increases). But in the system I suggested, the lower bound will be equal to the price increment granularity (which can be adjusted), i.e. the lowest possible cost to undercut will be 1% of the current price with the price granularity set to 1%, and 0.1% if it’s set to 0.1%.

I believe this will adequately address the problem of cost to undercut approaching 0% as price increases.

If what you’re wanting is a 1% undercut increment, it would be better served using a static 1% rather than “buckets” as you’ve suggested.

From a programmer’s perspective, this “static” 1% you speak of can actually be prohibitively complex when you start considering the implementation details of such a system.

Firstly there is no such thing as “static” percentages. Percentages are by definition relative, and thereby need to be applied to a value in order to yield a dynamic result.

Do we apply 1% to the current bid/ask prices in order to determine the next incremental price between the spread?

If so, how do we handle orders placed outside the bid/ask spread?

Rounding makes applying 1% a lossy process, and thus not reliably reversible, so we can’t apply the same algorithm to reliably find the previous price points outside of the spread. The fact that orders can be removed at any time complicates this issue even further.

So then do we allow any listings at any price points outside of the spread? But this would in turn open up opportunity for exploits like placing an order inside the spread at the 1% increment, placing another order at 1c increment over the previous bid/ask price, and cancelling the existing order to yield a new ask/bid with only a 1c increment over the previous price.

There’s a whole other can of worms that I’d rather not open when you start considering how to transition prices from our free-for-all current system to the new dynamic 1% system, which is important to because I doubt the population will accept just having all their orders ripped off and everybody having to relist everything from scratch under the new system…

Even if all the implementation details can be sorted out, there is also the performance impacts of adding multiple floating point operations to every single trading post transaction, along with the validation logic required. Trading post performance is just barely good enough for most people as it is, but with such added complexity this might no longer be the case.

Hopefully I’ve made my case as to why my suggestion would be more realistic to implement.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Min. 1% price-difference

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Actually, I believe that William Bradley Knight’s suggestion is the most elegant and easiest to implement. Your price increments are no more or less arbitrary than any other static increment, such as 1c (as it is now) or 1% (as has been suggest).

Using your 10g and below increment as an example:

  • A 10g Sell Listing has a 10s Listing Fee, or 1% of the Sell Listing
  • A 1g00s01c Sell Listing has a 10s Listing Fee, or 9.9999999% of the Sell Listing

If what you’re wanting is a 1% undercut increment, it would be better served using a static 1% rather than “buckets” as you’ve suggested.

Yes I agree that William Bradley Knight’s solution will be an improvement in market price agility over the status quo, but I don’t think it fully addresses a different fundamental issue discussed in this thread. Drago Ivansen has done the math and explained it much better than I could so I’ll just link his post and quote his conclusion and expand on it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Min-1-price-difference/page/5#post3873034

The change in willingness to buy is equal to a constant benefit divided by the product of the costs given all of the above assumptions. This proves as cost increases to a very large number the difference in willingness to buy will approach zero.

The problem with the status quo is that any later listing can bypass the FIFO queue at a relative cost that approaches 0 as the price of an item increases.

The change suggested by William Bradley Knight would simply turn the Last List First Fill system we have right now into a Last Relist First Fill system, that still benefits TP bots/notification users at the expense of regular buyers and sellers. Again, it’s admittedly better than the status quo where even relisting is prohibitively costly and slows the convergence to equilibrium price, but ideally I’d like to see a solution that addresses the other fundamental problem as well.

Min. 1% price-difference

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Reposting my suggestion because I honestly think it’d work reasonably well and be simpler to implement and transition to than anything else suggested so far:

Listings (bids and asks) on the market should only be possible in the following price increments:

1s and below -> increments of 1c
10s and below -> increments of 10c
1g and below -> increments of 1s
10g and below -> increments of 10s

And so forth.

The granularity can be adjusted to say 0.1% if 1% is not enough (i.e. starting increment becomes 1c at 10s and below).

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Min. 1% price-difference

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Here’s my suggestion from a while back on this topic:

My suggestion is as follows:

Listings (bids and asks) on the market should only be possible in the following price increments:

1s and below -> increments of 1c
10s and below -> increments of 10c
1g and below -> increments of 1s
10g and below -> increments of 10s

If 1% granularity is not low enough this can be debated, but essentially what we need is to make costs of undercutting relative to the cost of the item traded, so that prices can actually move toward equilibrium in a meaningful way with every competitive bid, and that every non-competitive bid will be filled in proper FIFO order.

The use of static price points avoids the need for any extra calculations in the server-side implementation, so performance should be unaffected. And it makes for a easy transition from the old system (i.e. simply round current price to determine the nearest price point in the new system and place into queue at the new price point based on current price in existing FIFO order for that price point).

The biggest issue I can think of with this particular implementation is at the edges cases where increments increase, where the minimum increment becomes 10x the normal granularity. But even at 1% granularity, this translates to a 10% spread at these edge cases, which is not enough to turn a profit. This can be decreased further if we use a lower granularity like 0.1% (starting at 1c increments at 10s and below).

With a 1c minimum order on a 1000g item in the status quo, it is possible for 1000 “competitive” bids to move the price of the item by only 0.01%. This is not an efficient market by any definition.

Before you start saying you can choose to bid in more than 1c increments, it is completely irrational to do so in the current market climate on higher priced items because the abundance of trading post bots and notifiers means that your order will be beaten by 1c soon after you place it regardless how large your increment is, as long as there is still a spread larger than the profit margin.

This new system will ensure that every 100 competitive bids will move the price by at least an order of magnitude, and that non-competitive bids will be filled on a FIFO basis as it should be.

Some additional justification on why I think we need to change the minimum increment to be something other than a static 1c across all price points:

It would make each competitive bid tangibly drive prices toward equilibrium. Whether it be higher or lower than the status quo is up to the current level of demand. It is impossible to judge where the actual equilibrium lies for certain items precisely because of the lack of agility in current market prices.

This will reduce spread and reduce (but not remove) the opportunity for profit in flipping for high priced, low volume items. That is the whole point of this change.

A lower spread benefits everyone except traders that depend on spreads to flip items and turn a profit, because actual buyers can buy immediately at lower prices and actual sellers can sell immediately to higher buy orders. And everyone will be getting closer to what the market deems to be a fair price i.e. the equilibrium price point.

Of course I don’t expect flippers to agree with this change due to conflicts of interest, but I’m sure most reasonable people can understand that having more items closer to equilibrium pricing is healthier for the game economy as a whole.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

HAMBOWS. i've had enough.

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

HAMBOWS. i’ve had enough.
DECAP ENGI. i’ve had enough.
BUNKER GUARDIANS. i’ve had enough.
SPIRIT RANGERS. i’ve had enough.
PISTOL WHIP. i’ve had enough.
MINION MASTERS. i’ve had enough.
PU MES. i’ve had enough.
Ele….wait nm

Pretty much this…

ANet has a tendency to introduce cheesy builds with their “balance” passes, and then instead of doing something to bring them down to the same level as other, more reasonable builds available, their idea of “balance” involves introducing new, equally cheesy builds on other classes.

This process has led to the cheese-filled meta we have today where everybody plays builds that are incredibly tedious and frustrating to play against because they’re the only builds that are even viable against all the other cheese the enemy team will surely bring.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Runes for my condi thief?

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I’d like to see more people abuse Perplexity so it can get nerfed asap… Glad it’s getting into sPvP for this exact reason… that’s one place where balance isn’t completely ignored.

The Balthazar changes are great but it still can’t compete with the cheese that is confusion spam.

[PvX] Balance, Iteration, Wrongdoing

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Another huge factor is the discrepancy between the frequency of attacks in PvE vs PvP.

In PvP, even when you’re facing a single enemy, you’ll be showered with constant harassment through auto-attacks that you can’t possibly avoid through dodges alone, and this is what makes mitigation/sustain factor into the PvP build-making process, and why balanced builds tend to do better overall in sPvP than extreme DPS-oriented builds.

In PvE, most mobs literally pause seconds between attacks, as if waiting for you to regenerate enough endurance for another dodge, and each attack hits an often ridiculous amount of health in higher level PvE content, making sustain/mitigation almost irrelevant and DPS the king, since you can and often MUST dodge any and all attacks coming your way.

Significantly reducing the damage of mob attacks and increasing their attack frequency proportionally is what I think would be the easiest and most efficient fix for increasing PvE build diversity.

PvP Rewards Blog

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t read far enough into the page.

“New runes, sigils and amulets can be unlocked for your account with gold”

Do I have your permission to cry about this instead sir?

PvP Rewards Blog

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Aaaaaand there’s the bombshell.

“you’ll be able to play PvP to gather almost everything you need to craft a legendary! The Gifts of Battle and Exploration will still require Badges of Honor and map completion.”

Legendaries tradeable, Ascended are not

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Bumping this thread because I was honestly hoping this feature pack would include making Legendaries untradeable again, or at least making Ascended also tradeable for consistency’s sake. But it looks neither is happening…

Would really like to hear ANet’s justification on why they decided to maintain the status quo.

[PvX] Balance, Iteration, Wrongdoing

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I’m glad this post is gaining traction, because my own post (made in April 2013) raising almost the exact same concerns died in a whimper.

I’m guessing after a whole year, the consequences of the lack of agility when it comes to balancing has finally started to sink in…

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems plaguing sPvP in this game is the feeling of stagnation caused by month-long delays between balance passes combined with ANet’s balancing philosophy of making small, incremental changes each pass.

Most successful eSport games have balance passes that are for the most part small, but always frequent. GW2 only has half of the equation for their balancing process, because for some reason, ANet has decided to tie the timing of balances passes to the timing of their major feature/content releases. And this, I believe, is the root cause of most of the frustration in the sPvP playerbase.

The first step to addressing this would be to completely disassociate balance timing and feature/content delivery timing. Features and content require rigorous internal testing to iron out potential game breaking bugs, which makes them time consuming by nature. Balance, however, (at least the subtle approach to balance that ANet is striving for) is heavily dependent on agility, the rate at which your team can repeat the cycle of evaluating customer feedback and the current balance state, introducing meaningful changes, polishing away issues, and reiterating into the next release.

It would be risky to jump into a new process right away for with a still relatively inexperienced team. So I recommend setting up public test servers to experiment with a more agile balancing process (weekly/bi-weekly maximum), that would allow players to try out changes in the pipeline, give early input, and discover issues that simply cannot be detected in controlled QA environments. This should be a similar infrastructure to what ANet’s internal QA team operates on, but on a much larger scale.

Having these servers could vastly improve the quality of the balance changes in the monthly releases (until you make the full transition), eliminate much of the stagnation problem for players who choose to partake in these servers (which I imagine will be a fairly significant portion of the sPvP player base), and provide a chance for ANet to improve transparency when it comes to making balance decisions.

Eventually, as ANet becomes more used to the weekly balance passes, they should transition into a more agile balance process for the main servers as well. The experience gained from the test servers should help ease the transition.

Any thoughts?

Bumping this post I made 6 months ago because sadly it’s even more relevant now than when I posted it…

We need more agile balance passes to quickly bring the meta into a playable baseline state. This last balance pass changed practically nothing. And from the looks of it you’ll be waiting another month at minimum before making any further balance changes.

This combination of small incremental changes and long waits in between balance passes is what’s killing player enthusiasm for sPvP right now.

Instead of pushing a handful of small changes and then doing absolutely nothing for months waiting for the meta to develop, learn to be more adaptive and reactive in your development process. Consistently observe player feedback and continuously push small incremental changes to improve lackluster builds and playstyles, and always be ready to do SOMETHING (again, small incremental changes) to shave down builds that becomes out of line within a short timeframe of its dominance. Be sure to always prioritize the latter to avoid power creep, i.e. stop waiting for other overpowered builds to emerge to match the previously overpowered builds and using these types of builds as your standard measure for viability.

Do this in a public test server if you’re not confident with rolling things out at a faster pace in the main servers. I’m sure plenty of sPvPers such as myself will be happy to be your guinea pigs when given the choice.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

New GM traits!

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

What I don’t understand is how this made it through QA.

I’d imagine in the same way the initiative passive buffs + active nerfs made it past QA. At least they didn’t have the nerves to come out and tell us this one is a “MASSIVE BUFF”.

Though maybe we just need to give them more time…

Please don't lock new/old traits in PvP.

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Don’t really want to bother wasting any more time on providing feedback that nobody will read, so I’m just gonna quote my rant from another thread.

Why do I get the feeling that each and every single one of these new traits will be at least as much of a grind as the 25 SP healing skills?

Being disadvantaged in terms of trait/skill build options is no better than being disadvantaged in terms of gear/stats.

All sPvP had going for it was the fact that everybody had access to the same build options regardless of how much or little time you had to spend grinding. This simple ideal is at the foundation of any truly competitive e-sports game.

Well, if sPvP wasn’t already a joke before, it certainly is now. Very funny, ANet.

For the record, I did try to provide constructive feedback when the 25 SP healing skills rolled out. Much good that did.

For me, the greatest appeal for sPvP in this game is the ideal that everybody should be able to compete on a level playing field regardless of time investment.

Please don’t make sPvP players, new or old, grind their way to equality.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

New GM traits!

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Yes because obviously Thieves who put 30 points into CS are looking for… sustain…

All this is going to accomplish is make the 10/30/30 Thieves so much more annoying to play against. Leading to more Thief QQ, and more completely unjustified nerfs down the line.

I’m expecting better from the other Traits lines but I know I shouldn’t…

What they need to be doing is reduce Thief’s reliance on Executioner by increasing Thief base damage by 10% across the board and reducing Executioner bonus by 10%, and compensating with some peripheral effect to keep it worthwhile as a Grandmaster.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Traits only unlocked by PvE?

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Why do I get the feeling that each and every single one of these new traits will be at least as much of a grind as the 25 SP healing skills?

Being disadvantaged in terms of trait/skill build options is no better than being disadvantaged in terms of gear/stats.

All sPvP had going for it was the fact that everybody had access to the same build options regardless of how much or little time you had to spend grinding. This simple ideal is at the foundation of any truly competitive e-sports game.

Well, if sPvP wasn’t already a joke before, it certainly is now. Very funny, ANet.

Tweaking D/P for WvW Roaming

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Definitely viable. Lately I’ve actually been running DP trickery with Shadowstep as my only Condi clear, i.e. standard DP trickery traits, Ogre Runes, Withdraw for heal, and I can usually drop even heavy condi builds in 1v1s before they can drop me.

The build has amazing burst potential, so the deciding factor in most fights is whether or not you can bait out defensive CD’s before executing your burst and whether or not you can make good use of your interrupts to ensure they can’t recover from that burst.

Thanks to the significantly higher crit dmg cap in PvE, winning against condi builds as a burst build with very few condi clears is not as daunting a task as it is in tPvP at the moment. Not sure how much this will change once the crit dmg nerf comes into play though.

That said, if you’re looking for large-scale/outnumbered fights, having a few more condi clears and a few more points in SA definitely helps.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Feature Build Balance Preview

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

New weapons would be cool, but it won’t do much good for Thieves’ overall state once the novelty wears off.

What we need are some serious overhauls to address the core issues with Steal and/or Stealth.

Feature Build Balance Preview

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Dhuumfire change is long overdue, but Incendiary Powder (engy trait) does the exact same thing and is more accessible, so it needs to be changed as well. Introduce some reliable activation for the user and opportunity for counterplay for the opponent in the same manner that your change for Dhuumfire should bring.

I have just about given up on ANet’s ability to balance the Thief class. I hope you can surprise me with whatever Thief-related change you’re not ready to talk about with the next patch, but I’m keeping expectations low…

Thief Collaborative Development a Success

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Can’t say I’m surprised.
Same thing happened with the previous balance patch.

The least they could do is tell us why they feel like they didn’t need to change anything.

Inf Return - Consolation Prize?

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

So now that it has lost most of its utility as an escape, can we maybe get a Leap finisher on it at last so that it can get a bit more utility as an engage?

Help Me Counter You :D

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

A thief will initiate a fight with a basilisk venom/backstab combo. The initial hit will be roughly 10k HP.

A bit of advice on this part: That initial hit is what you need to learn to avoid. And if you do avoid it, the rest of the fight will be greatly in your favor since he’ll be down an elite and half of his initiative, and a large chunk of his hp if you play your cards right.

Basilisk shows up as an icon on his status bar, so pay attention to it. If you see a Thief coming at you with the basi buff, that’s your cue to prepare for evasive maneuvers.

Pay attention to range as he approaches. 900 is the default range of Steal and unless he has a Infil signet (which you can also see on his bar) or traited Steal range (not many people run with this), this is the maximum range he can begin engaging you at, and most Thieves do tend to initiate at the max range possible. Keep target on him and pay attention to the range indicator on your skill bar and note when he gets within the 1200 range of decoy or mirror images. It’s hard to judge when exactly to start countering against D/D bursts since Steal is instant, but most Thieves usually precast C&D before stealing, so if you can see him raise his left arm while still at range, that’s usually a good cue to start countering.

When it comes to counters, here are some that I recall Shatter Mesmers using against me to a great effect (by no means exhaustive, ordered from highest to lowest effectiveness):

1) Blurred frenzy. This will make the Thief Steal into one of your hardest hitting, and hardest to land bursts and eat most of it, while you remain completely untouched. A bit of risk and reward at play here. If he doesn’t burst into your Blurred frenzy then you’d be down a skill for ~10s, but even then most Thieves would likely try to time his burst for when your Blurred frenzy ends, so you can chain it with one of your other options.

2) Illusionary Riposte. This will block the Steal and punish him with another very hard hitting burst. And teleport you away from where the hit landed and generate a clone there to absorb the C&D follow up.

3) Decoy. This will tend to make most Thieves steal and burst into the clone. The invis will buy you time to plan for a counter, but it doesn’t directly punish the Thief, and is a valuable stun breaker so I’d only recommend this as a follow up if the Thief waits out the above two.

4) Dodge. Again to reiterate, it’s hard to time dodges against D/D bursts since Steal is instant, but most Thieves usually precast C&D before stealing, so if you can see him raise his left arm while still at range, that’s usually a good cue. Dodging will leave a clone to confuse the thief and combined with mirror images can be used to land a full powered shatter with almost 0 delay.

5) Distortion. Although it works, this isn’t a good way to counter the initial hit because you’d have no clones out, wasting up to 3s of invul time. A better time is to use it mid battle when he Stealths off one of your clones to nullify his followup backstab.

Note that most of these tactics can also be used during the fight if the Thief doesn’t initiate with Basi. Since Basi has a cast time, you’ll be able to see it coming if he casts it out in the open, and you’ll be able to use any of the above to make him waste that Basi charge. More troublesome is when he casts it in Stealth, but you should be using one of the damage mitigation options above every time he goes into Stealth anyways to avoid the follow up Backstab.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

yes,...... venom thread. diff tho.

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Just separate Venoms and the effect generated by Venomous Aura.

Instead of having Venomous Aura duplicate “Devourer Venom” to everyone in range when you use devourer venom, have Venomous aura produce its own effect that it shares. This way venoms are no longer limited in design by the potential to be shared with up to 5 allies – you can design venoms with powerful effects that share lesser/tweaked copies to other players via venomous aura.

Residual venom’s is also garbage – 1 extra venom strike for 30 points in a tree? It’s also being strangled by Venomous Aura, as that is the only time RV is worth taking.

I think this is probably the right way to go.

Lowering trait tiers alone won’t solve the problem of Venoms’ effectiveness being held hostage to a single trait.

And yes Residual Venom needs something extra to be worthwhile as a 30pt trait, or be moved down to 10/20pt. IMO adding condi transfer would be consistent with the Deadly Arts theme and wouldn’t be unreasonable since venom builds are so utility strained that they probably won’t be able to take any condi removal utils.

Also, there needs to be a stun breaker Venom.

18 slot bags for rank 40

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

According to the livestream,18 slot bags will be available for 2k glory + some gold at the new glory vendor.

Does this mean it’ll be removed from the level 40 Glory vendor for 500 Glory?

Removing Ranks?

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Ladders are nice as a competitive feature but it’s transient (temporary) by nature.

The rank system is permanent. It’s a lifetime achievement showing how much time you’ve invested into sPvP.

How can anyone in their right mind think it’d be a good idea to just take that away from a dedicated playerbase after they’ve been slaving over the ridiculous requirements for over a year?

Feel free to remove glory as a currency, but keep rank points the way it is (except for the Skyhammer farmers who need to be banned). There is no reason why we can’t have both a long term lifetime achievement and a seasons system.

[Discussion] Skill Unlocks in sPvP

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Definitely a horrible idea.

For me, the greatest appeal for sPvP in this game is the ideal that everybody should be able to compete on a level playing field regardless of time investment.

Please don’t make sPvP players, new or old, grind their way to equality.

New healing skill is supposedly a venom

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

The new healing Venom will be a top contender for the most unreliable heal in the game. You can very easily get 0 healing from it from factors outside your control.

There needs to be a rather significant initial heal on cast, especially considering its long cooldown and that it also has a cast time.

Otherwise, why would any Thief take it over Withdraw, one of the most reliable Heals in the game, or HIS, which has great synergy with builds that make use of Stealth attacks, or even SoM.

Why is almost everything in the Gem Store?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I’d say not enough is in the Gem Store.
Give me perma-trader/banker/merchant/trait reset/hairstylist/makeover available for purchase without RNG.

Examples of Good/Bad Healing Skills

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Wow.

All this complaint about HS and what does ANet do about it?
Add an even more ridiculous version to another class.

If these are the actual numbers, there goes the last glimmer of hope I had for balance in this game…

Examples of Good/Bad Healing Skills

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

The Thief one is probably not worth using in any form of PvP because Venoms are just extremely unreliable (can be dodged, blocked, invul, etc), and you simply can’t afford to take gambles with your healing skill in competitive play.

Especially considering that Thief also has one of the most reliable Healing skills in the game (Withdraw, with its instant activation time and evade frames).

The key here is PvE. PvE Thief Support Builds(if they exist, and they may start to exist after this) will definitely see a boost. Group support is definitely seeing another boost with some of these skills.

Any support other than damage support is redundant in PvE for well-coordinated groups of players that have no trouble sustaining themselves.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

More daily - are you kidding me ?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

If playing too much is a problem for you, you are in the same boat as many people who’ve battled non-online addiction. Just as tobacco and alcohol are still being sold, developers are going to keep adding “things to do” to games. I feel for anyone who feels out of control, as I’ve been there. However, asking the makers of the game to exercise control for you is not going to help you in the long run. Only you can control you.

Good luck.

Amen.

I used to be in the top 100 when the leaderboards first came out, completing just about every single available achievement all the time.

It took quite a leap from my side to rid myself of this destructive habit, but ever since I did, I’ve been able to spend less time in the game and enjoy the time that I do spend in the game so much more.

If you don’t genuinely enjoy the AP hunting that’s required to keep up with the top dogs on the Leaderboards, you’re really better off stopping on your own accord before you eventually grow resentment towards the game.

Seriously, give letting go a try.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Stun breaker Venom

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Add a stun breaker component to the active of one of the lesser used Venoms.

Not running with a stun breaker is a death wish in any serious PvP build. Venom builds are always struggling for space on the utility bar, so having a stun-breaker venom would relieve some of that limitation.

Enemy endurance bar

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Yes, definitely. Can we also get a visual cue for Stability? Crazy to me that we have one for Protection but not Stability.

Just look for the icon before using cc

I think his point is we shouldn’t need to. I agree because we should be able to read the state of boons and condi’s from watching the Game, not the UI. There’s no reason why Stability should be an exception to this when all other Boons have some kind of visual cue.

Stability could be some kind of effect on the feet of the character model or on the ground below.

Please rethink your diamond skin change

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Bottom line is:

Balance should consist of toning down aspects of the game that are excessive (condi spam) instead of introducing more excessive measures (immunity and hard counters) to “balance” them.

As long as ANet doesn’t get this concept, there will be ridiculous power creep and rock-paper-scissors/whack-a-mole style balance with every patch and every player will be shoehorned into the cheesiest meta build for their class in order to be even the least bit competitive.

Mai Trin & Captain Horrik destroyer of pugs.

in Fractured

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

It’s difficult, but possible to dodge Mai Trin’s shadowstep.

Is it? From what I’ve experienced, it seems to completely ignore evade frames.
That’s what annoys me the most about this Fractal.

Perplexity runes

in WvW

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

8s is still way too short of a cooldown for 5x confusion stacks.
No other significant sources of confusion can be activated nearly as often. If you insist on keeping it at 5 stacks, a 30s cooldown is a minimum.

Runes should complement a build, not define it by completely overshadowing anything any class weapon skill can do.

Point taking crit damage past 100%?

in Thief

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

From a PvP perspective (WvW and sPvP), burst potential is the most important aspect of a burst build.

In WvW, with full Zerker + x/30/x/x/x build, you’ll start with around 65% crit chance. When you burst, you’ll generally have Fury because of Thrill of the Crime, so your crit chance becomes 85%.

Add in 5% extra crit chance from over 90% HP and 7% extra from side/back, you can see that most of the extra crit chance from Assassin’s will be redundant during your burst rotation, where it matters the most.

The extra crit chance comes with a loss in Power, which significantly reduces the potential damage output of your burst (since your crit chance is essentially maxed out anyways during your burst rotation), so it’s almost always a better idea to go with Zerkers instead.

If we’re talking about PvE, sustained damage might matter a bit more, in which case you can make a case for Assassins providing a more predictable and manageable DPS rate.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

Injustice in Season 1

in WvW

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

1. Give winning server players 1 free transfer, usable until the start of the next season and.

I really like this idea too, although I think it should be extended to the top 3 servers of each tier. It can really shake things up so that the next season’s matchups can actually begin in an interesting and unpredictable state.

ANet are you taking notes?

(edited by Kaon.7192)

What is so hard about healing signet?

in PvP

Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

but no one was complaining about healing signet’s “passive play” previously when the health regenerated was about 200+ per second.

This is relevant because…. ?

because healing signet was too weak previously, no one bothered.
and now it is better, a lot people suddenly has a lot of things to say about it.

a warrior is suppose to be able to take a lot of damage before he goes down.
the passive health regeneration from healing signet achieves that.

No one complained before because the passive play that HS provided had an appropriately lower reward than healing skills that require active use.

The problem with it now is that HS has one of the highest healing outputs in the game, and in turn makes passive play more rewarding than active play.