Lyssa’s ICD for the 6th bonus is currently set at 45 seconds for your information.
If one was to apply strict logic (without going into whether these issues are real) an easy to implement solution to both the issues that Nova Stiker and Ezrael have presented in this thread could be to limit the number of different types of conditions that may be present on a target at any given time.
Such a change would not only, obviously, limit the total number of conditions in game, but it would also allow for conditions to actually “miss” (they’d trigger but be blocked, as the target already has X amount of conditions on them, with X being whatever amount allowed of concurrently acting condition types). Players using condition builds would have to be aware of how many conditions their target is carryin in order not to waste key applications.
A side effect would be that classes and builds who have a large amount of condition types at their disposal would no longer be vastly superior to classes who inherently only have access to very few different conditions to deal their damage.
Cleansing abilities would have to be adjusted accordingly, however.
I am not suggesting this course of action per se, I am pretty much just trying to offer a solution for the perceived issues voiced by the two posters. Should the designers concur with their views on the issue though, the above might become a valid possibility in my opinion.
(edited by Med.6150)
If Justin’s girlfriend is going to make T-shirts for his fans, Karl’s will step up and release a Karl action figure.
Karl, if you read this, do not worry, we still love you.
Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost.
I am a bit baffled, Jon.
In my opinion Combustive Shot simply did/does too much damage, so that actually reducing the “burst damage it deals in 10 seconds” is fine with me, but I really don’t know why you are saying this ability is/was able to easily restore all of the adrenaline lost, when in reality not only do the pulses not “easily restore all of your adrenaline” but they do in fact not restore ANY adrenaline at all.
I’d be grateful for a clarification on this matter. Are there instances where Combustive Shot pulses actually restore adrenaline? I am testing it right now and with Signet of Rage on cooldown (Signet gives 1 passive adrenaline strike every 3 seconds), there is zero adrenaline gain from the respective hits.
Edit: Oh my, just saw the post above, I should refresh the browser every now and then considering there are 8 hours inbetween. Either way, Bear and I are basically wondering the same thing.
(edited by Med.6150)
Just tossing it out there,
“Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.”
30 tactics, boon runes = 100% retailation uptime.
About 500dmg every time you’re hit with average Warrior’s power.A Thief doing two Pistol Whips on you receives 10,000 dmg.
5 seconds base, so you’d need a 100% retaliation boon duration increase to get a 100% uptime (and even that would be only theoretical, since you’d have to be crit every single time the very second it comes off ICD. I am not aware of any runes that give 70% boon duration.
I am also not sure how you figure retaliation to be doing 500 damage per hit with 2k power. You’d need over 4k power (power, not attack) to get 500 damage out of retaliation.
I have heard of warriors with powerlevels of “over nine-thousand” even, but I am having my doubts that this is possible in GW2.
My feedback on these changes, Jon:
Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25% – [b]Whenever I invest points into this I come to the same conclusion and that is that due to it’s small radius, I hardly get any use out of it.
Now I understand that you have pretty much standardized dodge effects in regards to range for all classes, which might make it very difficult for you to increase its range without it being an inconsistency in terms of design compared to other dodge roll traits (correct me if I am wrong), but Reckless Dodge has no personal effect, nor an effect with a duration like the thief’s caltrops roll, so that it either hits or misses and more often than not, if I am in melee range and I am dodging through my target (let alone away from it), the dodge roll will propel me beyond the required range for this trait and thus not hitting my target at all.
If I could change this trait, I’d increase the radius to 240 from 180 and reduce the max number of targets to compensate for it (from 5 to 3).[/b]Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%. – Sounds good and in line with other classes’ trait changes
Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier. – I am fine with this
Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier. – Might be a little too strong for an adept tier line, though rifle is underused currently, so that for now this may not create any issues. Should rifle skills ever be buffed, this will become problematic.
Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds. – There is a pro and a con to this change, which will leave it basically at the same level.
Right now the biggest advantage of this trait to me seems to be the fact that if I manage to down my target quickly after it activates, I will then have enough quickness left to stomp it, which makes things a lot easier. With the change, I will have an easier time downing my target, but it will be almost impossible to have enough time to squeeze in a quickness stomp afterwards.
Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%. – Fine and in line with other traits.Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s. – Substantial buff and probably what it should have been all along.
Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact. – A change that affects all current builds, but it’s so miniscule, I don’t see a problem with it.Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%. – Good change.
Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%. – Good change.
Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear. – I can live with that, though I do believe that raising the damage coefficient to match the new animation time is in order.
Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. – Good change.
I want to add that it would be great if you could look into Counterblow and Riposte. Right now both these reactive skills have low range and require your target to hit you in order to trigger. With the long animation time both have, I find myself interrupting the follow up skill more often than not, because by the time it is executed, my target might already be out of range again.
(edited by Med.6150)
sure you have, they are the pistol/dagger guys that touch you then tele back for 2 torment and stealth->5bleeds from pistol one. but kinda irrelevant as they are just griefing builds that belong in wvw.
Actually, it can apply 12 stacks of torment in a matter of seconds, blink once and you’re dead. Works everywhere and quite effective against all classes, it even has a very cool technique to it that people can learn but that’s going off topic though. Burning, it’s OP and Warrior they OP too.
Technically more than a technique it’s a glitch that can be exploited with some practice. Practically, the investment in form of initiative is way too high for the potential damage (the torment stacks just don’t last long enough).
A warrior’s Flurry will deal around the same amount of damage and that skill is a little on the weak side in my opinion.
Dodge jumping has two downsides:
1. Some skills won’t activate during the dodge, because you will count as being mid-air. You can test this with many signets, which simply won’t activate while dodge jumping and only activate after your dodge is over, whereas they will activate instantly if you dodge normally during the dodge animation
2. Sometimes you can get hit right after the jump and right before the dodge (there’s a very slight delay between the jump and the dodge when dodge jumping).
Both of you used once in a blue moon examples, when I showed you that power hits harder under those conditions you both suddenly want to use averages. Are you sure about that? Because power hits harder on average too. We can if you want.
You are trying to be very antagonistic here and there’s no reason for it. You are also pretending you somehow showed that a power attack hits harder than a condition based attack in general, when there’s a screen above of a pin down doing 20k potential damage with a quarter of a second investment.
Lean back and chill.
Sure. 4515+sharpened edges. Sigil of air would be another 1350+. No need for 25 vuln stacks.
Yeah that show a lot. Nothing at all to be honest.
What are your buffs? What are the debuffs on the target? You can power up every attack to do 300% it’s normal dmg when creating a certain environment for it.
But that’s not the point of this thread.It’s not? BTW, when I say 1 in 100, I’m being kind and giving you 100% crit chance. Your example was actually worse than that.
Buffs and debuffs = 10 stacks of vuln from opening strike.
Why was my example worse? Because I used an attack which crits while using a rabid amulet? Alone the crit and burning proc (which is 100% on crit fyi) is enough to do ~5k dmg… But maybe you can somehow attack 100 times in 10s, which is the icd of the burning trait – then yes it would be an 1 out of 100 example. If not you can reproduce that dmg every 10s with an auto attack.
Because you can proc burning every 10s with 100% crit chance, or once every 20 attacks, but to get sigil of earth and sharpshooter to proc on the same attack it will take you nearly a minute on average. Math, it’s good.
You are focusing too much on most damage with a single attack, when the potential damage per attack has to be viewed over time.
I can deal a lot of damage with backstab and a proc, but over the course of a fight I will not be able to match the potential damage per attack of a condition based build.
I really don’t want this to escalate, because I realize that presenting an argument like the one I did can never be done in a way to satisfy everyone or every single aspect of it.
The easiest way to test your argument versus mine is to have a necromancer and a ranger (just an example) attack the indestructible golem for a few minutes and compare the total damage over the time elapsed.
I feel like people focus on the wrong things, as if they tried to be unproductive on purpose (I get it, people love the drama more than anything).
We have Allie divulging some interesting information (I watched the SotG back then, where J. Sharp stated that they do include top players in the balancing process, but you have been way more explicit, since we now know you guys have “face to face” discussions on a weekly basis).
I know first hand how communication between designers and selected players works. Not all they suggest is good, nor are good suggestions always listened to, because they might not be feasible to implement (that’s pretty much what symbolic has been alluding to when he says no matter how good your feedback, never count on it to be implemented, even thought it might happen occasionally).
That said, whether the internal process is fruitful or not, the most objective of questions I can raise in light of this new information provided by Allie is the following:
Have you considered replacing some of your inactive “top players”? It would only make sense to have fresh blood come in for those who are less interested in contributing. I know screening the forums for that takes time, but if this process is valued at all, that’s what I’d be doing.
Mammoth, I am glad that you chose to dispute my argument and that you also pointed out specifically where you believe I made a mistake. It is important to receive that kind of feedback, as when one makes an argument or tries to convey a message, they are bound to be subjective and get lost in a train of thought that is only clear to them but might not be as clear to the reader.
After reading your posts I realize I should have elaborated on that statement, though I believed it not only would make the post even more complicated, but also be very dry to read.
My argument: The general potential damage of a condition applying attack is way higher than that of a single power attack, especially in the context of range vs. melee dps guide lines.
Firstly, I stated how the potential damage of a condition attack is generally higher than what a single power attack can deal. What I am implying by using the term “in general” is the fact that this is not entirely true across the board and that there might be power attacks that can result in higher potential damage than an equivalent condition applying attack.
Secondly, I tried to be as concise and condensed as possible in my argument, thus I ended up being way too superficial in regards to explaining how range attacks and melee attacks correlate in terms of damage by design (“…especially in the context of range vs. melee dps guide lines”).
Let’s put some math behind those statements:
Using an Earth sigil in a 30/20/0/0/20 build my bleed from the scepter #1 will deal around 750 damage over time. On a critical hit using an Earth sigil, Dhumfire and Barbed Precision, I can turn my potential damage up by an additional ~1500 (Earth sigil), ~325 (Barbed Wire) ~1690 (Dhumfire). Coupled with the ~325 (heavy golem) power damage this attack will do (Rabid), the total potential damage this attack can do can scale up to ~4590 damage.
Now in order to explain how range and melee damage are balanced against each other based on the fact that damage uptime differs quite strongly between these two types of combat, we’ll take a look at attacks that deal power damage almost exclusively and compare the difference in potential damage between a power range attack and a power melee attack by using a thief:
In a 25/30/0/0/15 build (I am using this in order to get the highest damage in a reasonable build for testing purposes, but I am well aware that very few thieves would use such a build with either S/D or D/P at this point in time). I am also using scholar runes for the extra oomph, an air sigil and the assassin’s signet:
No bounce-Trick Shot critical hit (light golem) ~1650 (this is with Exposed Weakness and First Strikes), ~1500 Lightning Strike (again, this is done for testing purposes only, and fire instead of air would make a lot more sense on a shortbow) for a total of 3150 potential damage.
Slice critical hit ~2500, ~1500 Lightning strike for a total of 4000 potential damage.
What we can observe are two things:
1. Power based melee potential damage per attack is significantly higher than power range damage. This is a design decision that makes sense absolutely, because of risk vs. reward and the damaging uptime correlation between the two types of combat
2. Power based attacks’ potential damage is generally lower than condition based attacks’ potential damage
I deliberately chose to deal the power damage on the light golem, so that any mitigation issues would not further complicate the comparison.
I hope that clears up what I was trying to convey and ended up short on in my analysis.
(edited by Med.6150)
2. Reduce condition duration across the board
This one has had the most drastic impact of any changes on any of the abilities that have been adjusted in any way. For those who tested the Necromancer during beta it was obvious back then how much of an impact it had when the bleed duration on the scepter #1 was halved. This change would address the core of issues we experience with conditions and all the aforementioned side effects.
The downside, however, is that condition damage would probably be shifted entirely towards the other end of the spectrum, which would leave condition damage overall in a spot where it would only be “balanced” when it went uncleansed.
3. Reducing condition duration across the board and lowering the cool down of condition applying attacks accordingly
This is the one change that would try to introduce balance by having the burden shared equally between attacker and defender, though it would do so by significantly weakening the dependency between cleanses and conditions.
The upsides are quite impressive, as the reduced condition duration would take care of the issue with potential damage per attack that I have gone into earlier. Furthermore, it would not directly decrease the overall potential damage per second, since conditions would deal the same amount of damage through the ability to apply shorter cycles of conditions that last a shorter amount of time individually more often.
Another upside, as alluded to above, would be the fact that in order to deal the same amount of damage the attacker would have to execute and land more attacks, which not only would cut into the attacker’s time efficiency (no more fire and forget playstyle, which allows the attacker to place a potential 15k damage on a target and spend the rest of the time hiding, running or using defenses to outlast the opponent), but it would also give the defender increased opportunity to avoid parts of the overall damage by preventing some of the condition cycles (more condition cycles are needed to kill the defender, hence more chances to avoid single, shorter lasting cycles).
Thus placing the burden of acting and reacting in order to achieve their respective goal (kill/survive) on both parties equally.
The downside is rather raw and simple in comparison. Cleanses become less important, as the potential damage mitigated by cleansing a shorter, less lethal cycle is reduced quite heavily. The attacker is simply less vulnerable to cleanses in regards to his overall damage.
Apologies for the very long post that I have been wanting to make for quite a while and finally got to do so.
Thanks for reading.
(edited by Med.6150)
Well, as always, it is not a single issue by itself that causes a problem and everybody will believe to have found the “real issue”.
That said, I’ll try and offer an analysis from my point of view and experience in PvP and this genre in general.
If we look at all the aspects of how condition damage is applied (unavoidable procs from traits, critical conditions that can not be cleansed individually due to a multitude of different conditions providing coverage etc.), the underlying issue when it comes to damaging conditions is the potential damage (per attack) they are designed to deal.
So what is potential damage you may ask.
Potential damage is the total of damage a single condition applying attack will deal if it is allowed to run its course. The general potential damage of a condition applying attack is way higher than that of a single power attack, especially in the context of range vs. melee dps guide lines. Extreme builds can literally stack so much potential damage that they are able to kill a light golem with a single basic attack (#1) as a result.
The reason for this design decision rests on the fact that condition damage is balanced around cleanses and the furthermore that condition damage can not be allowed to exert its damage too quickly, because it ignores most passive and some active defenses.
Cleansing can nullify most of the damage conditions are able to deal, so in order to create meaningful play and counterplay (realistically you will never be able to cleanse a condition immediately, so that part of the damage will always be going through) and keeping the restrictions in mind concerning passive defenses, the conditions applied usually have significant base durations (as a result obviously the player who can prevent most of the potential damage through cleansing, is better off right now).
This dependency and interaction between damaging conditions and cleanses, however, creates an environment where conditions have to be cleansed in order to be balanced. Instances where they can not be cleansed reliably will put their effect beyond what was intended (an oversimplified example to visualize the above: if I hit a meta build D/P thief with a Pin Down right after he used Hide in Shadows, which puts him back at 100% HPs, he will die from this single attack. He can run, hide and avoid any other attack I’ll follow up with, but unless he gets back to his guardian for a cleanse, the potential damage of that range attack will be enough to take him from 100 to 0).
Some people will read the above and the first thought crossing their mind is “But even if my build focuses on cleanses, the conditions will still overwhelm me, because of the frequency with which conditions are being applied and the coverage provided by so many different type of conditions I can be affected by”.
While this is definitely what you observe, this again is a direct result of how long conditions last. The longer each individual condition lasts, the more conditions will ultimately provide coverage, because of the residual conditions still on you after a cleanse. This means that on the next condition cycle you are hit with, you will have to deal with any residual conditions that haven’t fallen off yet from the cycle before on top of the new cycle.
Now there are several remedies one can test to see if they can take care of these issues and that’s what the staff has probably been doing:
1. You increase condition removal across the board
I believe that is what we have been seeing recently. The upside to this solution is that you create more instances where conditions are cleansed, thus increasing the chance of having conditions deal “balanced damage” overall.
The downsides are that additional cleansing capabilities usually don’t come for free, as you will have to pick them up in exchange for other abilities. If you do not pick them up, you are in the same boat as before. This also puts the burden entirely on the defender, rather than making the attacker “work” harder for their kill.
Furthermore, while this solution will increase the chance of conditions getting cleansed, there will still be instances where they are not, which will again push them beyond their intended effect.
They need to remove the cripple from the sword AA. I hope they just do it, and don’t instead make leg specialist worthless again. Nobody cares about some spammy melee range cripple.
I’ll just put this in every thread now. This is what needs to happen.
The cripple on the sword was added deliberately to allow Warriors to stick to their target, as that is the theme of the warrior’s sword weapon. I doubt they’ll opt for that.
We don’t need it.
I am not arguing it is needed. I am just stating the reason behind this decision and unless people can actually prove it is not needed, which will be hard to do, it’s not going to go away.
Jon, the only problem I have with bug fixes is the discrepancy in how fast one bug is fixed compared to another.
I have submitted more bug reports than I can count and some were fixed immediately, some were fixed way late (like paralyzation sigil bug, which I submitted on the first day this game went live) and some have yet to be fixed.
I understand that some fixes are more complicated than others, but in reality, it comes down to submitting a bug at the right time to the right person through the right channels in order to get it fixed quickly (and I know that this is true for any game, as I have first hand experience and knowledge on the process, so don’t take this the wrong way).
I once had Karl fix a bug right on the spot (or at least acknowledge and forward it to the designer in charge), because I brought it to his attention while he was typing in the gw2pvptv chat and I was impressed.
If you are fully intent on improving the speed at which you guys can squash these bugs, your best bet is to set up a schedule for it on your stream channel for the sole purpose of having people flood you with bug reports on chat for 30 minutes or whatever and write them down.
This is just a suggestion, because I honestly have no idea, if you guys have the time, will or possibility to set that up.
(edited by Med.6150)
They need to remove the cripple from the sword AA. I hope they just do it, and don’t instead make leg specialist worthless again. Nobody cares about some spammy melee range cripple.
I’ll just put this in every thread now. This is what needs to happen.
The cripple on the sword was added deliberately to allow Warriors to stick to their target, as that is the theme of the warrior’s sword weapon. I doubt they’ll opt for that.
I fully expect a hotfix for leg specialist today. Complaints won’t die down immediately after that, but given that shouts got buffed and everybody is trying it out, many picked up Leg-Specialist in the process, which made this issue escalate.
Leg-Specialist is the main culprit, because it makes it almost impossible to cleanse the immobilize currently (if you want some fun, use Leg-Specialist, Sure-Footed and Frenzy (which btw got fixed now and is prolonged by Sure-Footed, so good job on that fix devs)).
The problem isn’t the stacking, but the bug that accidentally removed the ICD on Leg Specialist.
How many times do you think immobilizes were overwriting previous instances of immobilization before this patch? It did happen, but rather rarely.
Fix Leg Specialist (obviously an oversight, because the ICD was introduced specifically for the reason that Hamstring got moved to the autoattack chain) and most of the issues will go away (well, it will go back to what it was pre-patch anyway).
Tested it without Leg Specialist.
Every 20s I have an immobilize downtime of ~1s.
With the ICD back on Leg Specialist, I would gain 4 additional seconds of immobilize, once it is fixed.
Still 100% uptime.Never mind.
Other rotation went 100% uptime on immobilize without leg specialist.So, in other words, you went balls to the wall to maximize your immobilize uptime and were able to achieve a theoretical close to permanent uptime on it. Now my question is, in what way is that any different than before, other than it requiring less timing on your part (and a stationary target)?
It wasn’t possible before, because I could not use all immobilize and start cooldowns on all immediatly, giving a huge downtime between them.
By having to spread them out you are “wasting” cooldown time. That got removed. If it is off cooldown, you use the ability, and the cooldown starts again.What cool downs are you using specifically? It’s Flurry and Throw Bolas, so there’s hardly any time wasted.
So, how are you generating enough adrenaline to use full time flurry every 7-8s?
Pindown and constant weapon switching is needed for the 100%.
All you needed is Burst Mastery and Berserker’s Might for that. Test it out.
As long as you cancel your Flurry after the immobilize, these 2 traits will allow you to apply Flurry on CD with full adrenaline.
The problem isn’t the stacking, but the bug that accidentally removed the ICD on Leg Specialist.
How many times do you think immobilizes were overwriting previous instances of immobilization before this patch? It did happen, but rather rarely.
Fix Leg Specialist (obviously an oversight, because the ICD was introduced specifically for the reason that Hamstring got moved to the autoattack chain) and most of the issues will go away (well, it will go back to what it was pre-patch anyway).
Tested it without Leg Specialist.
Every 20s I have an immobilize downtime of ~1s.
With the ICD back on Leg Specialist, I would gain 4 additional seconds of immobilize, once it is fixed.
Still 100% uptime.Never mind.
Other rotation went 100% uptime on immobilize without leg specialist.So, in other words, you went balls to the wall to maximize your immobilize uptime and were able to achieve a theoretical close to permanent uptime on it. Now my question is, in what way is that any different than before, other than it requiring less timing on your part (and a stationary target)?
It takes 2 abilities to keep somebody “perma-immobilized”. There was little timing involved in staggering those skills and achieve just that, yet nobody was complaining.
No, you don’t get it. Leg specialist having no internal cooldown is just as necessary to hotfix as the chaos storm doing 30k damage was necessary to hotfix. It’s a huge gamebreaking bug, and not something that was a conscious design decision, like immobilize stacking was. Sure, the super buggy leg specialist plays off of the immobilize stacking change, but it’s a hotfixable bug in nature.
What do you mean I don’t get it. Of course it should be hotfixed and I never argued otherwise.
I still don’t see the major change to immobilize due to stacking. One could argue immobilize has been too strong all along, but this change itself isn’t as game-breaking as people make it out to be.
The problem isn’t the stacking, but the bug that accidentally removed the ICD on Leg Specialist.
How many times do you think immobilizes were overwriting previous instances of immobilization before this patch? It did happen, but rather rarely.
Fix Leg Specialist (obviously an oversight, because the ICD was introduced specifically for the reason that Hamstring got moved to the autoattack chain) and most of the issues will go away (well, it will go back to what it was pre-patch anyway).
Tested it without Leg Specialist.
Every 20s I have an immobilize downtime of ~1s.
With the ICD back on Leg Specialist, I would gain 4 additional seconds of immobilize, once it is fixed.
Still 100% uptime.Never mind.
Other rotation went 100% uptime on immobilize without leg specialist.So, in other words, you went balls to the wall to maximize your immobilize uptime and were able to achieve a theoretical close to permanent uptime on it. Now my question is, in what way is that any different than before, other than it requiring less timing on your part (and a stationary target)?
It wasn’t possible before, because I could not use all immobilize and start cooldowns on all immediatly, giving a huge downtime between them.
By having to spread them out you are “wasting” cooldown time. That got removed. If it is off cooldown, you use the ability, and the cooldown starts again.
What cool downs are you using specifically? It’s Flurry and Throw Bolas, so there’s hardly any time wasted.
The problem isn’t the stacking, but the bug that accidentally removed the ICD on Leg Specialist.
How many times do you think immobilizes were overwriting previous instances of immobilization before this patch? It did happen, but rather rarely.
Fix Leg Specialist (obviously an oversight, because the ICD was introduced specifically for the reason that Hamstring got moved to the autoattack chain) and most of the issues will go away (well, it will go back to what it was pre-patch anyway).
Tested it without Leg Specialist.
Every 20s I have an immobilize downtime of ~1s.
With the ICD back on Leg Specialist, I would gain 4 additional seconds of immobilize, once it is fixed.
Still 100% uptime.Never mind.
Other rotation went 100% uptime on immobilize without leg specialist.
So, in other words, you went balls to the wall to maximize your immobilize uptime and were able to achieve a theoretical close to permanent uptime on it. Now my question is, in what way is that any different than before, other than it requiring less timing on your part (and a stationary target)?
It takes 2 abilities to keep somebody “perma-immobilized” (Flurry and Bolas). There was little timing involved in staggering those skills and achieve just that, yet nobody was complaining.
(edited by Med.6150)
Arcanes were NOT nerfed. People still seem to be unaware of the fact that arcanes’ tooltip are not being adjusted and displayed correctly (sometimes they are and other times they are not, but the actual damage doesn’t change because of the tooltip), so every single patch, when somebody looks at the tooltips, they conclude that they were nerfed, when they were not.
The problem isn’t the stacking, but the bug that accidentally removed the ICD on Leg Specialist.
How many times do you think immobilizes were overwriting previous instances of immobilization before this patch? It did happen, but rather rarely.
Fix Leg Specialist (obviously an oversight, because the ICD was introduced specifically for the reason that Hamstring got moved to the autoattack chain) and most of the issues will go away (well, it will go back to what it was pre-patch anyway).
My body isn’t ready for the bunker warrior + rune of svanir meta
This.
Sit on node, almost die, automatically go invuln and heal for 3500+ from passive regen while still holding the node. Silly.
But, but…warriors have perma-stability so runes of svanir won’t work!
1 second immobilize base. Too strong in my opinion.
Still going to be difficult to make Pistol work in tpvp.
Blurred frenzy for instance does not count as if you’re capping a point
This was recently changed, you can’t use blurred frenzy to avoid the cannon in skyhammer but now you can use it while capping a point.
A Recent undocumented change apparently.. Just tested :/
This was very much documented and not so recent of a change either.
My fault I haven’t found the change in the patch notes yet;
however I did find the change to making BF not cap points.
It’s strange they changed their minds.
Okay I think something got lost in that quote mess. Last time I checked:
- Blurred Frenzy allowed you to cap a point. This has never been different, since you always could
- Blurred Frenzy acts as an evade, thus you can not avoid the damage from the skyhammer. This change to Blurred Frenzy happened a few months ago, as it used to be an invulnerability (which would still allow you to cap points, unlike every other invul)
- Distortion is an invul (same icon as Blur, which you get from Blurred Frenzy, but different effect) used to allow you to cap points. This was changed, so that you now do not cap points any longer just like you can’t with other invuls
Blurred frenzy for instance does not count as if you’re capping a point
This was recently changed, you can’t use blurred frenzy to avoid the cannon in skyhammer but now you can use it while capping a point.
A Recent undocumented change apparently.. Just tested :/
This was very much documented and not so recent of a change either.
ahahahah i’m a thief from beta, simply i have enough understanding of the class to understand who is the culprit.
Again, we NEVER really had a viable Sword MH set: now that S/D is functional, Inf strike OPness is shown, and i agree a thief should be able to jump into the fight and go away at will, but we need SKILL for it.
No other weapon set was as prevalent as S/P during the first months of this game, so no idea during which “beta” you started playing. In fact, I don’t even recall a single period of time where any weapon set has been as predominant as S/P used to be even now.
Most people talking about balance and skill spam only really started dabbling in that subject recently, you included.
“Spamming skills” isn’t anything that can be fixed. People don’t spam their abilities, because that is the most effective way, but because it is the only way and that’s because the game is so fast paced in terms of damage and TTD, yet nobody really wants a slower paced game and everybody seems to believe mashing their keys in combos that comprise up to 4 keys will distinguish between good and bad players, because those 4 skills will kill somebody else before they can even start thinking about being smart with their abilities.
Nobody would ever care about the “spammy” nature of pvp if it wasn’t as necessary, which means that reducing overall damage will do away with most of the complaints about skill spam or all the “perma-whatever” (cause you know, it seems like everything is permanent in GW2 nowadays, if you can do it more than once).
Once you reduce the damage, you can then reduce the effectiveness of the predominant survival builds, bringing the two ends of the spectrum closer together, opening up build diversity, decision making in combat and eliminating the so called “cheese” by rendering it irrelevant all in one big swoop.
It is no coincidence that “the pros” have started understanding that everything and every class is overpowered and needs nerfing. That’s because it isn’t the skills or the classes, but rather the fact that the game is way too much of a gamble by being so fast paced, that everything that is played in abundance and turns out to be successful (for reasons related AND completely unrelated to the builds of those involved) is regarded as too powerful or even broken.
(edited by Med.6150)
If I was a designer, I’d ask myself these things:
Why was nobody complaining about this ability when it was 10 times stronger than it is today and remained as powerful for 10 months?
How seriously can one take player feedback given this little fact?
i am not talking about winning vs na…i am talking about winning vs car crash for example without a thief..
We’ll never know.
Still doesn’t explain how the teams with a mesmer beat the teams with an S/D thief in the ESL cup. Your claim that that ESL teams weren’t as good, is irrelevant since, even if true, it would apply to all the teams in question equally.
Both thieves who got eliminated are supposed to be good. Neither of them were able to shut down the mesmers. In fact the mesmers were the deciding factor in both these teams moving on to the finals.
these were just examples…ah hell no …
please i need only a little bit of understanding when i write something…
when i say caed couldnt kill him i dont mean it’s impossible i just said that its another example of how many evades a thief can haveand concerning the esl cup…guys…we have seen the eu pax qualifications and the winner team obviously had a thief…and to my mind watching the esl atm doesnt count at all since most of the really really good teams have left gw2…which doesnt mean there arent good teams in esl as well but the real top teams have left..
I am assuming you didn’t watch it, else you’d realize that several of the teams in the ESL cup would have probably won PAX if they had played the NA pug team.
I am aweare of that fact but when you dont have enough initiative you can still port back out of the line of sight..thats my point..you cant kill a well played s/d thief just watch the pax finals…when caed tried to kill lady nag nag…he was full hp nag nag had like 4k and nag nag killed him
So basically the fact that Caed messed up and was way too greedy is proof of S/D thief being unkillable. How do you explain the ESL cup then? Both teams in the finals not only had no thief at all (they had a mesmer instead), they also each beat a team with a good S/D thief (if we want to believe general consensus).
According to you I could claim that S/D thief is out of the meta, because of the mesmer (rest of the team set up was identical in both cases).
they fixed the sigil of paralysation so hammer stun will only be 2.3 seconds instead of 3 and mace stun will only be 3.45 seconds instead of 4 when the next patch hits. as a warrior i have suggested long ago to nerf mace stun to 2 seconds, 2.3 with sigil. yeah its over the top and most warriors admit it if they are reasonable chaps.
You have suggested to reduce the Mace Stun from 3 seconds to 2 seconds a long time ago? Seems hard to believe considering Skull Crack used to be 2 seconds only 2 months ago when it was increased to 3 seconds.
What this means is that the top players now are sitting at a way lower rating than when he stopped playing. His decay kicked in, which seems to be more of a hibernation state than a strong decay function, and thus dropped to 131st.
Once he started playing again, the system kicked him back up to close to his old rating, which must have been significantly higher than what the top people currently hold, so that even the lost rating from the two losses couldn’t drop him enough to be below the second highest rated player.
The system itself is not completely broken, though I feel like this kind of hibernation state you are placed in for not playing leads to a problem, because one could argue that a player could accumulate much more rating during periods of low competition and then avoid being matched against the top players and teams during periods of “stiffer” competition, who in return will not be able to win as easily and increase their rating while at the same time being deprived of the opportunity to beat higher rated players and teams who are hibernating.
Given that we have no leagues currently in GW2 that force players to face similar rated players and teams, I suggest that not only should decay be more severe and permanent, but that your volatility rating should increase as well when you take a break, so that the system can better assert where you should be placed upon your return.
TLDR: Competition is relative at all times, so that rating can only be gained within the limits of what the pool of competitors allows for. If a team or player gains rating during a time when they can win 90% of their matches, because the competition is not as stiff, they should not be able to sit on this rating for prolonged periods of time by simply removing themselves from the pool of competitors without a heavy and permanent decay of their rating.
(edited by Med.6150)
I think he knows thief enough man…just saying, anyway best thing is to try out and see how it does..
I am not exactly sure what you are “just saying”. Him knowing thief “enough” or not is pretty much irrelevant to my argument.
I rarely see anybody pre-casting basilisk with lyssa runes, because it is a waste. Lyssa is used for a counter-offensive almost exclusively nowadays (you get condi-bombed, clear it, then you pressure your target, since you have stability, aegis and generally more survivability for the 6.5 seconds).
Bountiful interruption is a very strong trait, but thieves still will train you very hard in teamfights.
I know for sure that, in a teamfight, i would destroy any mesmer without Mirror of anguish in less than 5 seconds as soon as i get my basilisk combo off.
Since you go for 30 in chaos, i would take MoA instead of Staff reduction, at least to avoid insta-death by S/D thieves.
My build can also be played with 30 in chaos instead of domination and be similar to your one, but mantra of distraction really gives you and edge in 1vs1 against any class.
Alright, you keep repeating this, and I can’t help but point out that there’s a huge flaw in your concept that Mirror of Anguish will protect you from Basilisk and it’s the fact that 90% of the thieves running S/D will have stability up from Lyssa runes when they hit you with Basilisk (which will nullify MoA and/or any Halting Strikes).
That said, I have always thought MoA to be a good defensive trait and it is very useful in many situations for the simple reason that nobody can keep track of its CD. I also think the build you posted is good (albeit I would optimize it a little for my playstyle).
(edited by Med.6150)
Well, yeah, their mitigation is pretty active, that’d be ideal. But instead of engaging mechanics and varied skills rangers got sat with a single option because the rest suck, and the option they got stuck with happens to be the most boring one, ever.
Guardian is one of the most polished classes in the game. Warrior was too, his only issue was uptime in teamfights.
And what did they do? Oh, Give them 800 health regen with minimal investment, and the most broken high cd stances that make them 1v1 gods and temporary immune, but still doesn’t fix them in team fights because the broken 40-50 sec cd godly stances that break them in 1v1 will not be available in many of the teamfights.
Instead of giving them slightly more condi removal more often, they give them 8-10 seconds of condition immunity, 4 seconds of damage immunity, and 8 seconds of stability alongside the brokenness of signet of rage+ lyssa for an unpeelable damage monster.
Everybody should have known that with the damage they do warriors could not possibly have high uptime on targets, but it happened anyways and now you see things melt because there’s no way the other classes were balanced to survive eating a hundred blades or an eviscerate on top of the constant high damage autoattacks of the warrior who’s now regening 800 health per sec and has not only shield stance bur berserker stance and endure pain to wait out the second skull crack into hundred blades.
When hyperboles like these are presented, we really have to blame ourselves, the playerbase, for the mess that PvP has become.
800 regen per second comes with minimal investment?
Do you honestly believe that a Cleric amulet and a completely defensive build can be considered “minimal investment”? (Because I really hope you know that you have to run 30 in Tactics and 30 in Defense to get to that number). But that’s not all, you will have to run two mediocre utilities for that as well as a heal that you can never activate.
Seriously guys, the hyperboles need to stop, unless you have more fun playing the forums than playing the game.
BY DEFAULT a simple hammer AA chain will outdamage 100blades if you keep attacking for all 100 blades duration and you can easily compare the damage: 100blades is a 3,5 sec channeling dealing, in my build, 4800 blank damage, while hammer AA will deal, in the same time, 5600 blank damage.
I am not sure if you are joking or if somebody is feeding you bullkitten. Simple AA chain from hammer deals the same DPS as GS AA chain (takes you 30 seconds to test it and it will open your eyes). A full 100 blades deals 50% more damage than a AA hammer chain during the stun and that’s with Merciless Hammer in a 30 defense build.
This without account that 100 blades most damaging attack is the last one, which won’t always connect ( according to your opponent stunbreaker).
100 blades’ last attack simply deals twice the damage of the other 8 hits. A simple stun break at any point will hurt hammer AA much more dps-wise, because it is a slower weapon and thus each individual hit will make up a greater portion of your total damage.
This without accounting you can easily stop the AA chain with you hammer and going stunlock with backbreaker, staggering blow and earthsacker ( which deals by itself 5-6k crits if your foe is disabled, which again, will 100% occur).
If you deal 5-6k with Earthshaker without Merciless, you will deal 20-24k 100 blades. Skull Crack deals more damage than Earthshaker btw, just to give you a point of reference.
You’re wrong.
Not really, no.
The best build doesn’t even run gs, gs is decent right now simply for its mobility ( dunno why people don’t ttry merciless hammer, since it deals lot more dps than 100 blades and you can even chain stuns right after, but whatever).
It’s absolutely false that Hammer deals more damage than Greatsword. Hammer simply allows for more control and AoE, which can help in a lot of match ups that are difficult for GS, because most of the damage is stationary. GS outdamages Hammer easily, however.
Not impressed.
Maybe you would be if you knew that flanking+infiltrator costed 4 ini instead of 5 before nerf ?
1. How is that relevant?
2. I don’t even know what you mean by flanking + infiltrator’s used to cost 5, unless you meant larcenous instead of “infiltrator’s”. You should learn the names.
Also, no thief using that weapon combination ? Ok sometimes thieves go d/p to brutalize necromancers but sword/dagger still stands as the strongest 1v1 thief build right now. Where have you been all this time when people complained about larcenous strike brokeness like no tomorrow ? Anet even nerfed that freaking thing (same patch that reduced dhum fire from 4 seconds to 2 seconds) and it is still the strongest land weapon skill in the game. If you genuinely think that no thief uses that weapon set you are either trolling or unexperienced. (although i often see shadow refuge used instead of rolling for ini)
And you are either daft or ignorant quite frankly. Nobody uses double Sword/Dagger anymore, neither does anybody use RFI among other things (which makes me wonder where you have been all this time).
So let’s summarize:
- He’s using a 0/30/0/30/10 build (So no Mug and no Serpent’s Touch) on top of the lower damage output of the build compared to the 10/30/0/30/0 build. Mug, Serpents Touch and Pain Response would have made a huge difference in this fight.
- He’s using double S/D, which nobody runs with anymore and never was a good idea to begin with (though one could argue it was viable before the Infiltrator’s Strike "nerf)
- He’s not using Pain Response, which practically 90% of the S/D thieves use since the necromancer changes and which would have come quite handy here as well
- He’s using RFI, Infiltrator’s and Agility. Most thieves will either run with Shadowstep, Refuge (or both) and the Assassin’s Signet (and Infiltrator’s Signet, if they don’t run with Shadowstep for the stun break), as that’s the most effective set of utilities
- He’s using Energy sigils, when 95% of the S/D builds out there are either using Fire or Air for the extra punch
So basically out of 7 traits that the meta 10/30/0/30/0 build you mentioned uses, he’s running 5 and not even the same trait or stat distribution (and I am being generous, because most S/D thieves have also dropped Signet Use by now).
Out of 2 preferred weapon sets, he’s only using one that we see in a S/D build nowadays and out of the 3 preferred utilities, he’s also only using 1. Furthermore he’s using different sigils.
It’s a completely different build basically.
(edited by Med.6150)
You are playing a weird build and killed yourself to retaliation.
It’s also not even close to 1.2k healing/second (he was getting roughly 850/second with Leeching sigils)
no problem with his boon bro i can steal his boons… Larcenous strike
Not sure what you are trying to say.
@someone
weird build ? i wonder what game have you been playing so far, every single thief i meet in tournaments (or 1v1 king of the hill for what matters) plays 10 30 0 30 0 s/d
Look closer.
Not only is no thief really using that weapon combination or those utilities, he’s also not using the 10/30/0/30/0 build you mention.
You are playing a weird build and killed yourself to retaliation.
It’s also not even close to 1.2k healing/second (he was getting roughly 850/second with Leeching sigils)
(edited by Med.6150)
As long as carrying remains sheer impossible in this game, it will continue to be that way.
Thanks for the report. We are currently tracking this issue.
I hope you realize that any % condition duration reduction effects are currently working the same way.
There’s a single most glaring issue with conditions and that’s potential damage per attack/application. While the initial attacks can be evaded and dodged to some extent in the same way power attacks can be (procs can not be avoided), as soon as any kind of attack hits, you can get hit by an attack that deals 10k damage.
When you get hit by a power attack, it firstly matters which attack hit you and secondly its potential damage is way lower than a condi attack can hit you for in general.
The solution is simple: Lower the potential damage on condi applying attacks by reducing their duration and decreasing their cool down at the same time, so that overall damage is not nerfed.
(edited by Med.6150)