Guild Wars 2

Over the past month our thief community has been collaborating with the developers over balance changes proposed on November 2nd. Continuous threads and pages of posts have been shared by experienced thieves on functionality of these traits and effects on class balance. Interesting new ideas have been shared.

On behalf of all thieves I want to thank you for working up to December 10th.

These changes to patch text formatting couldn’t have been possible without your input.

lockheedlight.5910:

The prices rising to multiple tickets is dumb

It’s not dumb for the seller. Instilling a sense of urgency for the buyer to complete the purchase now instead of later is a classic and proven sales tactic.

JonPeters.5630:

Oh the new thief heal is going to mix some things up for sure!!!

Auesis.7301:

Here’s the in-game code: [&BxJVAAA=]
4 hits, 1.3k heal. kitten CD.

evilapprentice.6379:

This is starting to rise into the realms of the surreal … an indie developer wouldn’t let this pass QA.

Don’t forget that the person telling us the upcoming initiative changes are a “MASSSSSSSSSIVE buff to all thief specs” was from Anet’s PvP and Balance Quality Assurance.

Maybe they are going to push out an undocumented venom rework next week. Maybe next week’s Tuesday is April 1st instead of December 10th. Otherwise I’m beginning to believe that Sanduskel has been right all along: devs have the data and know what’s best for the class, there’s nothing wrong with thieves.

I don’t miss the 1200 range in Cluster Bomb, since the projectile speed is so low I’m rarely using it even at 900 max range. With current range it can still hit the top of keep walls in wvw, but camera angle problems are a minor usability issue when having to stand that close to the wall. However the small 240 blast radius means you cannot hit any strategically placed siege in any case, so more range would be of little practical use.

I’d rather take increased projectile velocity and/or attack speed over range increase. Trick Shot is advertised as ¼ second, but in reality shoots 0.95 attacks per second with annoyingly slow projectile speed. Add 1200 range to Trick Shot and you could fire a shot to max range and stop to have a lunch break before it hits.

Imagi.4561:

I feel like 35% was a good improvement to make it worth the master slot.

To me it’s still unclear what they meant by the “Increased healing scaling by 35%.” Do they add 35% to healing scaling, or increase the current 3.5% scaling by 35%? This question was asked in the CDI thread a few times, but went unanswered.

Current Assassin’s Reward skill is healing by 69 + 0.035 x Healing Power per initiative spent. That scaling is terrible; with 1,000 Healing Power it would add only 35 healing per initiative spent. What the 35% scaling improvement could mean is:

1. 69 + 0.04725 x Healing Power
2. 69 + 0.385 x Healing Power

Let’s look at a few examples.

Assumptions:

• Initiative regeneration 1.1 per second (default regeneration 1 per sec after Dec 10th, plus 10% more from possible traits)
• Case A 1,500 Healing Power
• Case B 1,000 Healing Power
• Case C 500 Healing Power
• Case D 160 Healing Power (Power damage thief with no specialized Healing Power gear. Divinity Runes and obligatory 30 trait points in Critical Strikes, which leaves 30 points to Acrobatics for this trait, and therefore 10 points into Shadow Arts to buff this trait by +100 Healing Power.

Constant Healing Per Second
Average healing rate per second when player is using all initiative, which regenerates at rate of 1.1/sec.

Original healing scaling 3.5%

• Case A: 121.5 /sec
• Case B: 104 /sec
• Case C: 86.5 /sec
• Case D: 74.6 /sec

Healing scaling improvement to 4.725%

• Case A: 139.875 /sec
• Case B: 116.25 /sec
• Case C: 92.625 /sec
• Case D: 76.56 /sec

Healing scaling improvement to 38.5%

• Case A: 646.5 /sec
• Case B: 454 /sec
• Case C: 261.5 /sec
• Case D: 130.6 /sec

Only the last option would bring any noticeable improvement, and be inline with other similar traits or closer to effectiveness of the infamous Healing Signet. Especially since there are no viable healing power thief builds.

My hope would be that Anet adds a group healing element to this trait, if they are moving it to Grandmaster when buffing it.

So that’s one page out of 17 in this thread wasted by just one person. Excessive trolling cannot be grounds for banning on this forum?

Julie Yann.5379:

Repair achievement should have been spend 1000 supply building siege.

No, no. Then they would just build cheap and useless siege in camps and keeps. Which can also siege cap your team.

I remember your older thread.

It’s usually not cool to reply to just correct a spelling mistake, but the word is “role” and not “roll”.

Assassin’s Reward
I’m proposing the interesting idea suggested by Enenion on Reddit’s Weekly Discussion: Thief thread.

When upgrading this trait to Grandmaster, please consider adding a component to it which also heals nearby allies. This would give thieves another group support trait, helping them become more welcome in parties and wvw groups. My vested interest is especially wvw guilds, who would currently rather want you to bring another profession.

For comparison and inspiration, here’s a list of traits that heal allies from other professions.

• Guardian. Writ of the Merciful – symbol heal allies
• Warrior. Vigorous Shouts – causes shouts to heal you and nearby allies
• Engineer. Elixir-Infused Bombs – bombs heal allies
• Elementalist. Healing Ripple – heal nearby allies when attuning to water
• Elementalist. Evasive Arcana – heal nearby allies when successfully dodging while you are attuned to water
• Necromancer. Transfusion – Life Transfer heals nearby allies

RAGE.9054:

Hey all, where can I read the actual patch notes?

No patch made yet. This thread is discussing proposed changes to be made on Dec 10th. You can read them here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/3133119

Ichishi.9613:

all the constructive feedback was already given and not replied to. So we are waiting for some enlightenment from our devs. Whether those are some answers or “thread closed”.

In closing of the main thread Jon at least says all posts were read. So wait and hope.

JonPeters:

There was a lot of great discussion in this thread as well as in the specific threads on profession, WvW, and PvP sub-forums. Even if it appeared to go unnoticed, it did not. I personally read every single post in all 11 of those threads, and I am quite certain that I am not the only developer working on balance who did so.

Viking Jorun.5413:

So this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJA6alYmCO3aS0E/5EyWBgi7hFCVPV3jryq0KA-jkCBYfJDbMwUgA0HwEIJL5rIasVRFRjVVjIqWlEzcuIa1SBYuwI-w

Just tested it on the golems in sPvP – seems to work

If that really works in live game like that, then I just made a duplicate ascended weapon set for nothing

Edit: Well I’ll be kittened, tested in PvE with two daggers total and it works. On swap sigil on one of the daggers procs on all swaps.

Ichishi.9613:

So this is getting closed today without a single answer given?

Patience, it’s only 5am in east coast now. Let him sleep

LoneWolfie.1852:

WvW impact
Opinion: My current DPS build will do more poorly by around 5-10%.

This has also been my gut feeling with 27k kills worth of DPS wvw thief experience. I just don’t have the math skills or combat log data to figure out what the actual effect is and will be. There have been various calculations posted.

Question to JonPeters:

• Do you think that dps thieves in wvw group/zerg encounters are currently overpowered, and need to be toned down?

If it goes like LoneWolfie says, thieves in wvw group fights will take a clear reduction in effectiveness in an environment when they were not desired in the group to begin with.

This appears to be an unfortunate side-effect from the general initiative regeneration balancing, which is good for class diversity as a whole. Still, I want to ask the developers if there are any changes that can be made to the patched initiative in cases where sustained hits per second is over one?

Reworking Opportunist to be more lenient in the high end. A five second cooldown feels more like an extension of passive regeneration than reward from actively hitting things. Or improving shortbow auto-attack speed & velocity to balance the initiative starvation, since that must be used more.

Laeir.5197:

I wrote a simulation to estimate the percent gain (or loss) with the proposed changes under varying attack and critical chance rates.

Nice one Laeir. This kind of data is what I’d like to see presented by the developers instead of overflowing marketing talk.

If this is how the change goes it would seem fair enough. However I remain concerned since there exists other calculations that show less gains.

Jon could you please take a look at this data and verify its validity?

MyCondolences.8172:

Laeir wrote this in the main topic about thief changes.

That seems to contradict Nilgoow’s data.

Nilgoow gave an example of 57% crit chance hitting 1 target per second having a 48% reduction from opportunist. With base regeneration changes it would be a 0.145 or 14.98% increase.

Current:
Base 0.75
Opportunist 0.218
Total 0.968

Proposed
Base 1.00
Opportunist 0.113
Total 1.113

Whereas Laeir’s table indicates something around 23% increase for that scenario. So I wonder whose data is more accurate, and how the multiple hits will end up being. Laeir’s version would feel fair overall if real, only adversely affecting the very top end. And in that case compensation changes could be made to the individual weapon skills like unload.

Very interesting data to see, thank you for your efforts.

Nilgoow.1037:

Fitting a function to the respective curves shows that a thief with 57% crit hitting one target once every second will go from around 0.218/s to 0.113/s, a decrease of around half.

Would you have data to share in this same case when hitting two targets every second? Personally I’ve been worried about what this change will do to the initiative of my wvw thief build when we are in middle of the zerg clashes, where you’re continuously hitting multiple opponents with auto-attack bounce and Cluster Bomb aoe. These engagements can last for a while, and I wonder how initiative starved I’ll end up being.

ChapDev is right, full Berserker is fine outside of wvw, but there you’ll want also to bring toughness and/or vitality. For conditions what he recommended, for power based builds for example a mixture of Soldiers (power/toughness/vitality) and Berserker to balance survival and damage.

When running with a thief in zerg fights I’m using full Soldier armor with Divinity runes, Soldier weapon and Berserker trinkets. That feels like a good balance between decent damage and staying alive. In wvw you don’t want to get downed, since that will allow enemies targeting you to rally. Which is why zerker builds are infamously called rally bots in wvw.

Arikyali.5804:

Last question: Why do I see so few thieves carry a bow? … optimize stealth/power and condition damage could be very deadly with it.

FYI the bleed stacks in Cluster Bomb are currently bugged. Instead of the said 3 stacks the undetonated bomb applies only one. Poison is slow to apply and duration low. So it’s not effective as a condition weapon.

Shortbow is good as a power based weapon in the bigger wvw zerg fights, because of the auto-attack bouncing to up to 3 targets and AOE in Cluster Bomb at short range. But that is better when you stay in middle of the action.

The in-and-out playstyle you seek sounds like it could be a better match with something like a pistol condition build. Bleeds or confusion through Perplexity runes. But I’ll have to leave it to someone experience with them to suggest builds.

JonPeters.5630:

Versatility for thief. We are giving every single thief build 33% more initiative to work with. We have said this a number of times, but clearly it needs to be said again. If any other profession was getting a patch note that said: Decreased cooldown of all weapon skills by 25%, that would be considered a huge buff. The way initiative works is obfuscating how powerful this change it, but please consider the value of this change when weighing thief changes in this patch.

Cross posting this quote made into the main thread earlier today for reference, since many won’t probably read that since it’s so cluttered.

That mindset makes me a sad panda.

Esplen.3940:

It’s to prevent botting/excessive listings in a time frame.

And the quote for that is where? Your given reason is just speculation of players. There is exists no patch note or statement from Anet about this bug. Other than someone asking in forums a long time ago to get examples of it, when it first appeared.

Bot prevention would be a poor excuse, since they have infinite patience and could just be programmed to wait more in between sells.

Esplen.3940:

1 in 100,000 items are being manipulated.

So is it more likely that precursors are being manipulated than one dropping?

JonPeters.5630:

Initiative changes
we have been and will playtest this a lot more before we push this change.
…
to ever so slightly reduce the maximum amount of initiative you can have per second if you min/max those traits.

Please Playtest Also in WvW

And I don’t mean roaming and pvp style small group fights, but running together with your commander and guild into large scale battles. The actual Guild Wars. These engagements can last for a long time and drain your initiative. And I can’t switch weapon sets to refresh timers like other classes. By trying out builds and play styles, I’ve found out I must use the traited initiative regeneration from Critical Strikes and Acrobatics lines to remain effective and barely staying alive.

Moving the initiative regeneration to be heavy on default feels counter intuitive to the stated goal of rewarding thieves in keeping up the pressure. Disengaging to rest up is hardly possible in wvw when following your commander while surrounded with enemies. Especially with Opportunist cooldown increase it looks like we are going to end up being low on initiative in the heat of battle and less helpful to our team than we were. Thieves have no passive group support; we need the initiative to do that.

I’m requesting you to be lenient with the initiative traits. Consider coming up with more creative ways to prevent any perceived abuses of traited initiative, like pinpointing specific skills instead of a blanket nerf.

After patch Quick Pockets would be the last remaining initiative skill in Acrobatics worthy of consideration. But by moving Assassin’s Reward into the same Grandmaster tier I couldn’t get both initiative regeneration and survival. For survival I don’t care about Hard to Catch, whose name in wvw might as well be Death Sentence. Is it necessary to move Assassin’s Reward to Grandmaster? Its attrition is helpful for tankier wvw builds, and looking forward to test the improved version.

As everyone I appreciate the improved transparency and discussion about future changes. It evidently leads to lots of crying, but overall better for the community spirit. Makes us players feel involved instead of just being handed the changes. Keep it up, thank you.

For future reference what would be really useful to have is time stamped and detailed combat logs exported to a file in the game directory.

Fletch.3572:

DAoC did pretty good(which is what lured me here in the 1st place), there were entire stealth wars while the main skirmishes were going on, was quite exciting. The different tiers of stealth made for some compelling gameplay.

How did it work in DAOC? Could GW2 thieves for example have a level 25 Shadow Arts minor trait that allows them to see enemy stealthed players like they see allies. Something like that could help with the attitude towards long stealths in wvw.

Thief initiative regeneration:

Quick Recovery
Changed to increase base initiative regeneration by 10% instead of 26.67%, which is a small benefit for Master trait. Similar Master traits of other professions reduce weapon skill recharge by 20% in addition to other benefits. Please consider leaving this trait unchanged to keep it inline with other professions.

Opportunist
Initiative regeneration reduced by 2/3 is a very big shave.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

The change to initiative regain baseline is a huge buff to ALL thief builds

From the looks of it I disagree. Thief builds which are already using the above mentioned traits appear to have their regeneration unchanged after the patch according to this post in thief forums. Could you please check the calculations in that post and comment on the findings?

Ljiona.9142:

Just some newbie, what is so special about week 7?

Leaked patch notes revealed that Scarlet will invade EB in week 7.

But did imply that PVT would be suitable in the current dps focused PvE meta. I was not being clear; meant to agree with OP.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Any wvw build works for pve too so no need to change it every time.

Zerk builds aren’t that good for wvw.

Squeesidhe.4761:

“Error attempting to sell” is a sloppy, inelegant solution to gold selling. If that is indeed the purpose.

Nowhere has Anet stated that this feature was added to hinder gold selling or botting. Those reasons are speculation of players, and are not logical. It’s an error message, and seems like a bug.

foofad.5162:

Stop defending a stupid system.

It’s stupid. It’s completely asinine that people have to spend an enormous money on a GAMBLE (and it is that, gambling) in a game like this.

Yes, it is a form of legalized gambling. Sold to adults and children alike. But this system is what Anet has decided is the most profitable for them, so we must live with it. People would also be complaining if the skins could only be bought for $100.

Subjectivity / Aesthetics:

• Other medium armor styles besides trench coats

Jabberwock.9014:

Anet is extremely conservative and refuse to release anything that could be seen as somewhat sexual

Well you can already take your clothes off and run around in your underwear.

Amaterasu.6280:

I reported the recent bugs, no response from any dev.

Same here, made bug posts which have been buried with no response or fix. This whole thread feels like a result of someone tasking Tyler to make these posts on the forums, but nobody being tasked for reading and responding at the bugs forum.

To the several people posting your bugs above, he asked you to report them in the Game Bugs forum, not in this thread.

Tyler would it be too much to ask for developers to respond to the submitted bug reports and acknowledge whether they have been assigned to be fixed? It’s frustrating to post bug reports to the forums or in-game, and see them go unfixed and apparently ignored for weeks, months or even over a year.

Avatara.1042:

Give it a memory feature as well, so I do not lose my search when I click on different categories.

That’s how it was working at release and for a few months after that. Then one patch made the search page reset every time you went to another tab and came back. I hated that change.

risenlord.2035:

Use your weapon swap to move again without waiting the 5 seconds.

Thanks, was unaware of that workaround.

I can confirm this happens after building siege every now and then. You cannot move for about 5 seconds.

MisterEction.9382:

A similar issue was resolved here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Order-of-Whispers-armor-color/first

Yeah, I had those Whispers boots that had the similar bug. Two times a patch made the dagger on the boots bright red, but it was later fixed. So rest assured Asuras that at least Anet knows what is causing the issue and how to fix it.

The problem on my boots was related to the fact that before patch the dagger attached on the boots could be colored separately with dyes, but this dye slot was removed and dagger turned bright red. Instead of 3 dye slots the boots had 2. My guess is therefore that the bright red color it the default color for item texture that has no dye on it. Are the asuran boots now missing one dye slot by any chance?

Nalora.7964:

This is, as far as I know a botting prevention thing.

Can you provide a quote for that? The patch notes didn’t mention it.

Only workaround is to wait until trying to sell again. This bug has been in the game now for over a year. Anet has not acknowledged its existence, so we can assume that they have not planned to spend any developer resources fixing it or the trading post as a whole.

This bug has been in the game after one patch in fall last year, so over a year. I’m not aware of Anet ever acknowledging its existence. There was one old thread in these forums where an Anet employee asked to see examples of this error from users who reported it, but made no further reply.

You are right that either the tooltip or skill is bugged, but I’d rather take the word of a developer. Logically thinking it feels that the skill itself is bugged, since you have one big bomb with 3 bleed stacks, which splits into 3 small bombs with 1 bleed each.

Thief shortbow #2 skill Cluster Bomb should apply 3 stacks of bleeding if not detonated according to its tooltip. If detonated, it splits into three smaller bombs which each apply 1 bleed stack.

Bug: The undetonated bomb only applies 1 bleed stack instead of 3.

Just an observation that this sounds like the same issues wvw is having after the latest patch. Maybe something was broken.

Tiriyon.8735:

Is a grey market legal?

Yes. These usually won’t violate local jurisdiction laws.

Yes, there are several exotics with the new stats that are bugged, and don’t drop the new inscriptions. Saying this anecdotal claim with experience of having about 1500 Globs of Dark Matter.

Simzani.4318:

Knote.2904:

An option I’d really like to see is smart ground targeting when targeting areas that are out of range.

Like if I use a 900 range teleport, but I cast it at 1000 range, then it still casts at it’s maximum 900 range in the direction of where I tried to cast it. Instead, right now it just fails until you target within range, which usually means you’ll waste like 100 range.

This would be a huge QOL change.

This. Please. Asap. Thanks.

I want this also. Currently the lack of this feature makes fast cast ground targeting quite slow, since I’m required to go though a series of trial and error casts to find out a range where I’m able to cast.

If I’m trying to cast at a spot which is a little over the maximum range by using fast cast ground targeting during a fast action battle, my intention is still to be able to quickly cast in that general area and not to fail because of a few pixels estimation error. Getting actions done is better than adhering to absolute precision in measurement.

I can only speak with experience as a thief, but for example short bow skills 2, 4 and 5 should all cast at the maximum range if my fast cast ground targeting is activated over the range. At least up to half or two times over the range. Even if I don’t move my mouse cursor at all and have cast a skill at close to the max range, subsequent terrain and camera angle variations can cause the next cast to fail because it’s no longer in range.

As an example of what we seem to want, warrior Greatsword skill #3 Whirlwind Attack is working in a similar way. Even if it’s cast over the max range with fast cast ground targeting, it will still activate in that direction for the max range.

Bump, since the latest patch only removed the ‘Account Bound’ text from the item description, but the item is still account bound. Item still has the ‘Soulbound on Use’ text like on attached screen shot, but when I right-click it the only options given are: Equip, Preview, Destroy.

Fasyx.9347:

I think precursors will fall until we can craft them ourselves, then people will realise it will be the same(I guess around 500-600g) amount time/gold you will need to buy it from the tp —> Precursors will explode up again.

Problem right now: people think ANet will throw the precursos for like 300g(g for crafting it) at them.

Don’t have a source, but I recall a claim from Anet that only 5% of the player base will ever get a legendary. With that rarity goal in mind, I agree with you that the upcoming precursor crafting/hunt is not going to be easy or just crafting them for ~300g.

Look at the item descriptions of both salvage kits; they are the same.