Guild Wars 2

For the greatsword I think there are several things that would be cool:

I like easymodes idea bout it possibly removing boons but not the rest. Line attacks are usually terrible and we already have WW as an aoe which is actually really good. I think some sort of soft haste but for a longer period like say 25% haste for 10-15 seconds would be really cool and synergizes really well with our burst weapon. It would make burning your adrenaline not only viable but very attractive. I would also accept a gap closer like heartseeker and eviserate as well to stay on target with a good dps kick in there too. Make it our finisher because right now 100 blades isn’t usuable outside of frenzy and I’d rather not be dependent on frenzy at all.

@ Dual: Yeah I think thats exactly along the lines what what I’m talking about. Make a stealthy backstab rewarding but also costly if failed.

Wolfe I swear if you keep up these reasonable post you’re going to make me actually start to like you

Wolfe I think that’s a very well reasoned post. We’re just trying to get a dialogue going about it although I understand many on both sides go crazy in one direction or the other. Balance is so tricky it may very well be that once stealth is fixed thieves will be terrible we just don’t know and that’s the problem. One small change to a core mechanic could break a class even one that’s considered OP. Small changes are def preferable to big changes all at once with any class.

I personally think they should leave the burst and take away some survivability forcing glass cannons to spec for more survival or die every time they make a mistake which would actually be balanced. When I say survivability I mean stealth, speed, etc not hp which is already pretty low.

Eduardo.4675:

Proelitor: ur post as nothing to do with my post; second, thieves are almost useless now, any organized/vent team with non backpedalers will beat any team based on ur composition any day of the week,just because this game revolves around… reaching 500 points first, wich is, and ever was, about holding down at least 1 more node than ur opponent. Complaining about 1v1 is useless, thats not how you win the game, bacstab (a proper one, with sin sig) has a 36 sec cooldown, in that time a competent guardian will have earned…18 points, against 5 from the backstaber. Crazy thing,i know. And add to that the fact that a engie or a ele can do the exact same thing, and there u have it, 3 profs that earn more points than any egocentric-built thief. I once also thought that thieves were more usefull, but now… not so sure anymore.

No actually my post has everything to do with your post and the general defense of “thieves are only good in 8v8s not in 5v5s.” The only thing inhibiting burst total domination of 5v5s is bunker builds. That doesn’t mean the burst isn’t broken it just means that it’s being prevented from completely dominating super bunkers in organized 5v5s. They are already looking at the bunkers and they should be looking at the burst at the same time. I know it’s really hard to see the connection but at least try. I swear it’s like you guys have blinders on when it comes to seeing the big picture and how you fit in it.

Everything’s cool guys. Eduardo cleared it all up for us.

Eduardo if it wasn’t for bunkers there would be nothing but thieves and mesmers running in 5v5s. You know this. I know this. We’re just one bunker nerf away from that really. Bunkers are the only thing standing between total burst domination of the meta and the bunkers actually developed as a consequence of the initial burst domination of the meta to counter it. Crazy how that works.

Ashanor.5319:

Sorry, but you are advocating for an archaic version of a class that just wasn’t that fun. Nobody wants to play that “jack of all trades” class that is a master of nothing. I want to play an Assassin. If Thief was some “jack of all trades” watered down boring class, I would have no interest in playing them.

Oh trust me I know exactly why all of you want to play the assassin. I get it. It’s exactly why it’s broken in every single game. It just doesn’t belong in these games. It’s exactly why the perverted version of the thief (aka assassin) is either UP or OP but never balanced. They took everything that made the archetype interesting and threw that out in favor of the “assassin.”

Lymain.6723:

Proeliator.8740:

I think the data perfectly reflects what we would expect. The noob friendly easy to use classes that make bad players look good and are solid performers are also the most played because the people in the second group will always flock to them. I think Guardian is a bit of an exception because its a little pigeon holed into “tanking” which isn’t that glorious in many people’s minds.

You can run Static Discharge Engi builds without kits (well, just the med kit) that are basically as effective for beginners as D/D thief builds. Maybe beginners aren’t aware of that, though.

No doubt. I’m sure there a lot of different builds etc that are highly effective but people tend to try what they hear about the most. All you need do is take a look at these forums to see the countless threads regarding thieves being OP. Plenty of people want in on the action. Things like 100Blades warriors will be tried for the same reason but are quickly abandoned because it’s less effective, less consistent, and more squishy. When people try something they hear about and it actually is really easy and effective they tend to stick with it until it’s nerfed.

Care to expand on that Ash? Everquest came out around 2000 and I can’t remember exactly how they worked but that may have been the first time we saw such a perverted version of the classic fantasy archetype of the thief. Ultima online didn’t have classes anyone could do anything.

Before Ultima and the MMO industry thieves as an archetype in fantasy were highly charismatic, highly agile, jack of all trade types that brought a ton of utility and support to a group primarily but did mediocre damage and were very fragile. Note the focus on group support and utility rather than raw damage. Granted there was a subset of assassin types that were lumped into the archetype but it was far from the focus of it and they weren’t capable of anything even close to what we see in WOW or GW2.

I find the Anet teams use of the term thief which was the tradition D&D name of the archetype interesting and refreshing rather than the stupid “rogue” but it’s far from representative of the archetype itself. They took the classic name but kept the new age assassin concept which is exactly what makes it so bad and in a lot of peoples opinions OP. They shouldn’t even call them thieves they should call them ninjas or assassins because that’s the way they are designed in this game.

Dee Jay.2460:

I already felt like thief was most OP class, your data makes it pretty much incontrovertible.

You are making the false assumption that the most popular class is also the most .

And you are making the false assumption that there is no correlation at all between most powerful class and most played. LOL at quoting Ghostcrawler about WOW balance in their forums. The guy was clueless if you actually read the forums so using him as some kind of basis for definitive statements is ridiculous. The devs rarely know what’s actually balanced or not that’s why it’s so difficult for them. The people that really know what’s up are the Pro and semi pro, objective unbiased PVP ers who dabble and play all the classes and don’t just focus on one to the point they develop bias.

There are groups of people like myself who will stick to 1-2 archetypes across all games because they really like those archetypes. There are also groups of people who will play the easiest most powerful class they can find regardless what their actual preference for style or archetype is. This type of thinking is easily recognized in the forums when you hear someone respond to complaints about a class like thief for example respond with “you chose the hard class” or “you chose the wrong class” etc etc. Some of us don’t select classes based on power we assume or at least hope they will all be balanced equally and want to play our selected class in the manner we choose.

I think the data perfectly reflects what we would expect. The noob friendly easy to use classes that make bad players look good and are solid performers are also the most played because the people in the second group will always flock to them. I think Guardian is a bit of an exception because its a little pigeon holed into “tanking” which isn’t that glorious in many people’s minds.

Stin you’re absolutely right and it’s been said before. Thieves have been disigned in such a way that promotes spamming. I completely rest the blame for that on the shoulders of the designers.

The problem with thieves in general is that the WOW incarnation of the archetype and other games that followed shifted them from being a jack of all trades, support based trickster to a deadly assassin 1v1 specialist. This is not representative of the archetype at all they are more like ninjas than thieves. Sadly most players only know the archetype in this form and accept it as the traditional role of the class/profession.

The traditional incarnation of the archetype is actually really cool to me because it has a lot of style and personality to it. The way WOW and now GW2 has changed thieves into master assassins is disappointing to me.

The problem ultimately is that the profession has no options. I could be wrong about this but I see the people that play the archetype as people who just like gibbing others and don’t actually care for fare fights. I would love to see the class actually have some support diversity and defensive arts instead of being the class that everyone just expects to kill stuff as efficiently as possible. That’s so boring, not fun, and is the source of so much complaining among everyone which you can see in these forums.

Thieves need the same options as other professions to be able to either support or deal good damage but not both. Their evasive skills and traits should be tied into their support skills and group buff so that they can have great survivability through stealth and evasion while supporting their team. Give them support buffs through musical instruments their suppose to be a very charismatic archetype not the one that can insta kill you. They should arguably have the best support in the game. Their damage traits, the ones that make them into death dealers, should prohibit them from also having great survivability through stealth and speed. I’m ok with them getting sick damage I could see a thief rocking double swords and going straight up with a foe where it’s almost a dps race kind of thing and he truly is a glass cannon but as it is now they get all of that front loaded damage and still have lots of survivability as well. It’s not just this game. It’s not just the stealth bug. It’s been like this for the archetype for years now and it started with idiotic WOW and it’s the only incarnation most of you have seen which is sad because it’s not an actual thief it’s more like a ninja.

Let me get this straight from all of you thieves…. you don’t see how button mashing one or two keys is an advantage to having to use 4-5+ keys to do the same thing? I know some of you are having a huge problem with critical thinking but let me see if I can break out my big crayons:

This isn’t some WOW raid where you’re standing in the back doing a standard dps rotation and don’t have to worry about moving, dodging, thinking, etc. Hitting one or two keys is akin to auto attacking and completely frees your mind to focus on…. wait for it…….. what you’re going to do next and react to what your opponent is going to do. Guess what happens when a complex or multi step dps rotation gets disrupted? The player has to think fast and reset it or do something else. Either way that requires attention and is most likely a dps loss. In PVP you will have tons of disruptions because players are doing everything they can to not allow you do get off your full dps rotation. Yeah I know this is a crazy concept but the less complicated your dps delivery is the more you can focus on things not related to delivering that dps like defense and tactics. I know I just blew some of your minds.

I’m not speaking specifically about balance here because I don’t know all the classes inside and out but for the thieves saying button mashing 2 to do the same thing as pushing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 isn’t an advanage are in pure straight up denial.

Frizz were the the guy that did the first one where you were playing the warrior and included yourself? If so thank you for making the adjustments and providing the info.

Signet of rage is amazing. The problem I have with it is that I think we’re balanced witht he assumption we’re all using it and it will be up most of the time. That’s not cool at all……..

Phaeris-

dude I completely misread your post maybe others did too. You seemed to be complaining about defensive warriors but you’re actually complaining about fightings bunker builds as a warrior. Self face palm I hope others made the same mistake because your title paired with the way your OP read confused the kitten out of me.

Class and spec please?

I wasn’t aware warriors had the best tank spec in fact this is the first time I’ve heard that said.

@Wolfe

First of all not to completely invalidate your opinion or anything but you’ve been in every single thief thread out posting nearly everyone and consistently posting “thieves are fine.” Now I’m not saying you are completely biased but if looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…… Many people have made a lot of great points regarding why thieves are a bit too much and you always have something to say. It’s just that you’re kinda the vocal minority defending a lot of what’s a little too good about the profession and any suggestions on changes you seem to respond with “this will ruin us”

Wolfe.3097:

again, above 25% my AUTOATTACK dps’s down a target faster then hitting HS. so if hes using it above 25% hes doing you a favor and making life easier on you. having any of the thieves weapon set skills have a Cd or be unable to be used until a condition is met (aside form our one stealth move per weapon) would be unbalanced.

Wait why is balancing a “finishing move” in a way that you can’t spam it imbalanced? If what you say about auto attacks is true it changes nothing regarding how HS is being used. The strongest mechanic of the skill which I think you actually know is true is that it’s a gap closer/target lock. Many professions rely on out auto attacks for a large portion of damage the way I see HS being used is to reaquire or stay locked on if your target actually manages to put some distance down. Now in that sense the fact that is has no cooldown makes it extremely strong because essentially there is no getting away. Combine that with the best mobility in the game and highest damage and I think it’s a little too good.

as far as autolock and people complaining about its gap closing nature. it has no evasion frames, zero, the entire time during its animation you can CC/cripple, damage the thief. and if yo0u cripple him, it also shortens the length of the “leap” considerably to where its no longer a effective gap closer. this all is combined into it being completly avoidable, doing negligible damage outside of haste effects or above25% hp. literally the only thing your getting is you dont like hte thief doing the same animation over and over, in which case id say it doesnt matter, thieves are designed to use there damage move when they want to do damage, not cycle thru multiple damage moves, we dont have that. now admittedly this has to be one of the weakest thief specs available now and anyone who usees it or has trouble against it needs to pick there game up a bit.

The repeated animation has nothing to do with the complaints you’re hearing. If that were the only issue you wouldn’t be seeing countless threads, screen shots, and videos. I know it’s easy to write people off by simplifying the argument but it’s just inaccurate. The complaints are based on performance both in terms of cost, ability to spam, simplicity, target locking, gap closing, etc. Not just damage or animation.

No evasion is the defense you think justifies it? No profession gets anything like that. Come on….. You think that snares are the answer? I think you’re just reaching here it’s not like these are protracted engagements we’re talking about things happening in seconds where putting a little space between yourself and your attacker is the difference between life and death I don’t think the fact that snares still work actually changes anything at all.

yes warriors have CD’s on there weapon set abilties, thieves dont, while the ability itself may have similarities its still comparing apples to oranges, you could just say you dislike that thieves dont have real CD’s on there weapon set abilities.

No it’s not comparing apples to oranges that’s actually just a cliché people throw out there to dismiss a comparison out right without having to address it. The comparison is actually very valid because it has everything to do with how melee stays engaged and finishing moves which should both be managed so a player can’t simply spam it to stay auto locked until someone is dead. It’s just too easy when you can mix in HS to auto attacks and other skills for both good damage and to stay on a target. You’re correct most people don’t like that thieves have no cooldowns while the rest of us have to manage several different resource pools as well as cooldowns but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be any consequences to using it other than it doesn’t do as much damage as something else above 25%. This could easily be done using the initiative resource itself by tweaking cost while maintaining the integrity of the system itself.

Wolfe.3097:

and if it crit for 8k you were probably below 25% hp in which case cry me a freaking river its a execute ability its supposed to hit hard at that point.

I don’t think anyone would complain about a finisher doing a decent amount of damage. It’s not really a finisher though when you can just keep clicking it until someone is dead. The way it works now even if a person is at say 40% life it still doesn’t hurt to start spamming it because you will stay auto locked on target and eventually they will be at 25% and dead. That’s not a finisher that’s like a “special” move you can always use.

Lets compare that to say a warriors “eviscerate” which works very similarly to HS. Eviscerate requires adrenaline which you have to build up. It has a 10 second cooldown so even if you had unlimited adrenaline you couldn’t spam it. It acts as a gap closer which makes it extremely valuable. Basically you want to set it up vs just being able to spam it until it lands because if you miss you won’t be able to use it again for a bit.

Do you see the difference?

I think the thing that makes HS so good is that it’s a gap closer and essentially allows you to stay auto locked on a target. Even if HS did no damage the fact that you have a spammable gap closer is huge. Compare that to what other melee get……

@Fiesbert

You’ve sold me. Your argument about Mesmers and Guardians being at a disadvantage because they don’t have quickness is just too compelling and is obviously representative of what we see being dominant.

Arguing that one class has an ability another doesn’t is akin to saying warriors should have stealth and be able to make clones because they are at a disadvantage to thieves and mesmers.

Warriors also take 50% more damage while frenzy is up btw and lose a utility slot. Pretty big imo and without frenzy warriors have no real burst to speak of. Now should there be no burst in the game or how exactly do you want it to look because the way warrior burst works is dependent on one weapon skill and multiple utilities unless we have other players assisting. We also lose a ton of survivability unlike thieves who don’t rely on actually taking damage for defense. Is that not balanced or do we just remove burst altogether?

As of now a burst warrior will lose most of the time to anyone who can dodge or mitigate the initial burst. Very little condition removal and lower hp and armor means they go down fast. There is no stealth and run away etc. They get snared and just die. What more do you want?

Nobody talks about Warriors because they’re fine. Is this one of those things where the class you play is getting too much heat so you point the finger somewhere else?

100 Blades is the only burst spec warriors have and is far less effective and way more predictable than anything a burst spec thief can do. I’ll admit burst specs can be pretty annoying for most players but warriors are weak sauce as far as burst goes and look like paper compared to a tank guardian so yeah……..try harder

LOL at BG being a low tier server. I guess you haven’t seen the rankings?

Seriously is there any point to the server vs server fights when people change servers weekly? Whatever happened to loyalty anyway?

I’ve been on DB since starting. We’ve been kicking our butts kicked every week due to this kind of stuff and just lost even more guilds but I’m not changing servers. All you server shifters are a joke to me trying to jump on a winning team instead of working with what you’ve got.

I’m on DB and just got out of doing WvW for a few hours. SoS seems pretty well organized in eternal BG or else they outnumber us not sure. They seem to be covering both the north and west at the same time.

Was fun I killed many and died a few times myself. Going back for more soon!!

MG doesn’t even seem to be represented other than a good push a few hours ago then they lost everything again.

Your post is a little dramatic but you have a point. Things are not completely out of balance though nearly every class is viable in some sense. Usually when you refer to the top 1% of teams there will mostly be a few things that always work better than anything else in any game. Even if you destroy everything people complain about right this second like thieves, mesmers, bunker guardians, a new “best class” and style will emerge to fill that top 1% and that will be the new “thing” to complain about.

Ok all of that being said Anet does seem to be a little unsure about what to do. I think it’s a good thing that they aren’t rushing to make changes if they aren’t sure but it would be nice if they got serious about balance and played the game hardcore themselves to flesh out imbalance instead of just “listening” to all of us. If you just listened to all of us nothing would make any sense. For example in the thief threads you have 1 or 2 guys like wolf posting enough to make anyone second guess themselves yet that’s a vocal minority and the majority feel differently.

What Anet is doing is anything but “whack a mole.” I’ve seen that style in other games where you have crazy yo yo balance. If anything they’re suffering from inaction but that’s probably better than doing the wrong things and hopefully they will figure things out very soon.

All of you have been very helpful thanks. I was hoping for a work around to be able to bind my shouts onto one key. All of your suggestions are good and definitely doable I was just hoping for simplification so I could focus on what I was looking at more. I think I’m going to just try and pick up a gaming mouse. In PVP I think trying to hit shift or move my index finger too much would cause me to lose my finger placement on my movement keys or simply become too cumbersome.

I love this kind of stuff. I think we need a thread dedicated to it.

I played a Warlock in WOW and anyone who played a warlock or rogue will understand this gif:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m9/Zorro_013/lolLockpic.gif

It’s painful, funny, and true all at the same time.

I’ve been experimenting with a shout build and I think I like it quite a bit but I’m having a problem keeping my shouts up. If you combine 3 shouts with signet of rage + 2 warhorn skills that’s lot of skills to be actively monitoring on short cooldowns. Generally I would think you would want to use them every single time they are off cooldown. At first I thought I would just bind them all to one key so I could use them all at the same time and just click one key to use any that are off cooldown but I don’t think the game will allow me to do that.

I use WSAD to move/dodge, TAB for targets, and generally use my mouse for everything else. Maybe I just need a gaming mouse I dunno it just seems a little more difficult to stay on target in this game which makes looking at my skill bar a huge disadvantage vs other games.

BTW I joined SPVP last night first time for one game to test my shout build before investing gold/karma in gear and got 2nd in points at over 100 so it’s not like I’m completely kittened I’m just trying to up my game. Any help would be appreciated and maybe the recomendation is just to get a gaming mouse? Anything else to simplify the rotations?

Man this is getting annoying “thiefs” is not plural for more than one thief that would be thieves.

Personally I think all you thieves are in deniable about your ezmode profession and are just making threads to counter the overwhelming sentiment that’s you’re a little OP.

Power > Precision > crit damage > Condition damage

Condition damage is one of the worst stats you can get imo. If the wiki is correct you only get 5% of your condition damage on your bleeds so you can do the math. On top of that every class can clear conditions and many classes clear them from other players such as we warriors as part of support builds. On top of that you max out at 25 stacks. Anet says they’re looking at conditions and trying to make them more viable but atm I don’t think it’s a good idea to focus on them.

The guy that started this thread has not posted once to defend it and this is the first post I’ve seen of his in the PVP forum. This is a troll thread by someone clueless of pvp and worthy of the dump.

This thread is a joke right?

You have a guy posting about how face roll warriors are in PVE in a PVP thread lulz.

@ Nautika

You’re trolling right? Before the last patch the consensus was that warriors were mid to bottom tier class and now all of a sudden they are #1? Seriously?

Second, warriors are the only class that hasn’t been looked at and most of us aren’t happy about it. Go check our class forums and see the long list of bugs in many of our key skills/abilities. We haven’t been looked at in a long time and none of us are very happy about it.

You must be one of the 100 blades whiners? I and many like me don’t like it in it’s current form. Lack of mobility isn’t good even if the damage is. Many of us would gladly take a damage nerf for mobility.

Valhallen.1693:

Once you see the thief stealth, dodge roll and run away

I think this quote sums up peoples complaints nicely.

RJmass

I think your solution is a little overly complex. It’s been suggested before btw.

What I would personally like to see is hundred blades damage toned down by around 20-30% and being able to move while using it. This would still make it a great skill around 7-10k if everything hits but not a wtf pawn if it does either. Also provides mobility which is sorely needed. Everyone wins.

As far at arcing slice goes I personally don’t care for it either but I see no reason to change it just for the sake of change. If we really wanted to do something with it and we made the change I recommend to 100 blades I would personally love to see it as our gap closer/finisher similar to eviserate/heartseeker. It’s tied to adrenaline so it shouldn’t be OP that’s kinda our only resource and right now is generally mediocre. Lower damage but mobile 100B would synergize well with the other skills and if arcing slice was changed to a finisher it would fit perfectly.

Changing 100B to the adrenaline skill in it’s current form is not a great idea imo and would hurt the class a lot in both pvp and pve.

Those are interesting suggestions but it wouldn’t take much tweaking to make us unkillable. You’re also talking about a very specific request by you which is to be able to get in and out by being able to do you damage and then retreating without dying/taking damage even when being focused by a lot of enemy players. I think that’s kinda the definition of being OP.

The short cooldowns on defensive skills combined with self heals, health regen, high defense, and high hp pools is bordering on unkillable especially in a shout build. With a 5 sec ignore pain every 30, 3-4 sec shield block on an even lower cooldown, and throw in some dodges and evasive maneuvers and the enemy would only have a super short window to kill you between your heals. If you’re a shout build constantly cleansing and healing the only thing that may have a shot at it would be a zerg focus fire or glass cannons and even then I dunno.

I’m a little obsessed with class balance having played so many PVP oriented games and I’m still always surprised that people seem oblivious to how easily something can become OP with just minor tweaks. I think the balance in this game is actually pretty good and it’s that very reason that people feel weak because with great balance comes actually dying because things are even so you won’t always win.

That being said shortening cooldowns may have some potential I’m just not sure you can do it without making us OP

This thread actually reminds me of another very similar a few days ago may have been same OP?

Generally speaking if you’re running towards the enemy zerg you will be the target of focus fire every time. 2+ players focusing you should either make you retreat or die every time or else the game would be melee > range.

You seem to be complaining more about the Meta of WVW rather than the balance of melee vs ranged. The mass range kittenergs tend to deter melee because unless you have more than 1-2 melee charging in you’re going to die to focus fire as it should be.

Steph the reason I’m giving you grief is because you’re listings all of these complaints to sum up that you want the survivability to withstand focus fire by 2-3+ people. Many of us have and do get in and out of concentrated formations doing a lot of damage and then get out again. The reason damage is a valid thing to discuss here is because warriors have outstanding damage output. If you want the survivability of a guardian you will have to nerf our damage.

@Stefanplc

You seem to not be complaining that warriors aren’t viable, but that they aren’t OP like many complain Guardians are. You also want to play a thief now apparently. Well guess what many consider the 3 most powerful classes atm? Yeah that’s two/three you listed. You can roll flavor of the month if you want many do.

stefanplc.5234:

I 30 points into Defense should make you much more durable allowing you to actually play melee in a WvWvW environment. I don’t mean allow you to actually go in first vs 20-30 people and have high expectations, but at least be able to run in vs 2-3 opponents and not get torn to pieces in a matter of seconds.

Man I’m tired of hearing this. Nobody should be able to face tank 2-3 people and still have decent dps. Nobody

As far as your points in defense you don’t need all 30. Toughness doesn’t even work against conditions and from your video it looks like you let them build up and cook on you quite a bit without even using shake it off or mending so that may be an area you want to take a look at to start.

Further I see you took “defy pain” and endure pain as well. You realize they are only working for 3-4 seconds and not the full 5 correct? Just something to note because whether it’s working as intended or not I think a lot of people are avoiding them. You also aren’t going with all defensive skills as you claim you have signet of fury on your bar so please don’t give me that.

Finally vitality > toughness imho for survivability

You seemt to be referring to trait lines here because you’re listing all of the secondary attributes. The effects granted from the trait lines themselves both major and minor are far more valuable than the stats themselves so I would only consider the stats themselves as an afterthought to selecting the right traits for your playstyle be that offensive, defensive, or a balanced build.

Many of your stats or attributes come from your gear which is great because it allows you to select the traits you want and still be able to compensate for stats you need be it power, toughness, vitality or whatever.

What stats and traits are best for you depends a great deal on what you will be doing. PvP or PvE? Playstyle? For the most part though lets assume you want a good balance of offense and defense.

Offense: power seems to be the best bang for your buck as demonstrated in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Toughness-Power-theory-numbers/first#post352915

Precision can be important but if the assumption in that thread are correct it would only become more valuable than power after a certain amount of power I’m guessing around 2500+

Defense: It’s a combination of your defense + toughness = armor. Armor also doesn’t even effect condition damage. Toughness as an attribute appears to only have a fractional impact on your survivability in combination with your inherent defense from your heavy armor. Because of this I see vitality as being the most important of the defensive attributes you can attain.
In conclusion I rank attributes in an order similar to this:

Most valuable: Power & Vitality
Second: Precision & Toughness

The secondary attributes aren’t that powerful so I wouldn’t really focus on them nearly as much as the primary attributes.

Great work Fadeaway

One thing I will note though is that there will be a break point somewhere that makes crit chance and crit damage more valuable than power. I’m guessing it’s somewhere around 2500 power. This is because your crit damage is a percentage of your base damage so it’s scaling with the damage you’re doing meaning 10 crit damage is less valuable at 916 power than at 2500 power.

Another thing to note and this is hard to quantify but there are many effects that work off of crits like bleeds for example that aren’t factored into the equation which would increase the value of crit chance as well. I don’t think it’s going to have a huge impact but it’s worth nothing.

Finally there are skills and effects that increase crit chance inherently without the need for raw stats from precision. For example “unsuspecting foe” grants a 50% crit chance to stunned opponents, and blademaster. These types of effects would increase the value of stats like crit damage significantly during the duration of the effect (good for burst builds).

The best way to do it would be to list out all of the different armor types available and in what stat combinations etc. Then I think it would be fairly easy to pick an optimal combination of stats. Without actually doing that though I think somewhere around 2500+ power, crit chance and crit damage becomes more valuable.

lol I guess I’ve been doing it wrong

Def do you know if you take the damage reflected?

Defy Pain – Activates Endure Pain at 25% health, basically makes you invulnerable for 4 seconds. Supposed to be 5 but I believe it only last 3-4. Internal cooldown is something like 90 seconds?

or

Spiked Armor – Gain 5 seconds of retaliation when struck by a critical hit, 15 second internal cooldown. If the wiki is correct you would be reflecting around 400 damage a hit for the duration at 2k power.

Which do you guys think is better for pvp? Do you actually take the damage reflected or is their attack reduced by the amount that’s reflected?

There is nothing inherently wrong with using 5 signets. It’s a perfectly legitimate dps spec and the person using it could easily be bringing that dps even with a rifle for example. More dps is bringing something to the table. Is it as supportive as a shout build? No, but if we were all doing the same things it would be boring. This game is not difficult let people have fun and play the way they want. You could actually run 5 signets and still have decent defense with points in defense.

That being said if someone is running a glass cannon build and can’t stay alive constantly needing to be revived then they are actually slowing the group and I could see being irritated. That has nothing to do with the spec though and everything to do with the player. Lots of players accross lots of classes that fall into that category.

PanH

Never played GW1 so hard to comment but auto-following your target seems like a pretty dumbed down system that eliminates tactical movements like strafing and circling. Those movements separate good players from bad players very quickly. We also have loads of snares to help as well. If I misunderstand what you meant I’m sorry just not understanding.

As far as the rest of your point you’re main complaints seem to be about getting focus fired by say 2 or more ranged players. Well what do you think is supposed to happen when multiple characters target you? Focus fire is supposed to be able to kill stuff. You guys seem to be focusing on the zerg style of WvW which isn’t really relevant because anyone from melee to ranged gets blown up in WvW when they get focused. If anything we get blown up a lot less because we have more hp, more armor, and more defensive traits, and we have the option to use range if we need to. It’s as Grimshade said if you want to melee you have to be intelligent about it. No you won’t always be able to wade right into an enemy formation at least not alone but if a lone warrior could do that legitimately I’m pretty sure it would be broken or our damage would need to be nerfed so much to compensate I would no longer want to play a warrior.

Melee is already tougher and does more damage in many cases than ranged and can strike multiple targets with auto attack. Not sure what more you guys can ask for without making us OP.

Plague what other “game” are you referring to with “legit melee?”

The melee in this game seems pretty legit to me. A lot of people tend to think if they’re not OP they must be broken but getting killed and blown up at times especially to focus fire is called balance. If they made melee any stronger the game would become melee focused instead of balanced. Balance is what we want.

You mention things like diminishing returns or defense bonuses for closing distance etc but we already have so many ways to close the distance and even escape I don’t see why this is necessary. I’ve literally run into huge groups of people blown cooldowns and been focused on and then simply run out again using rush or bullscharge etc. If I get snared or anything I just pop stability or mending. I don’t always escape but if I did it would be broken wouldn’t it? In front of a keep I’m the guy who won’t go down from ranged fire and I can tank damage while I rez other people. Our defenses are already built into our healthpool, traits, skills, and armor. Not sure what more you guys want I feel like a beast out there sometimes and I never pull out my rifle.

Please tell me the absurdity of this thread isn’t lost on anyone?

Dre you’ve likened the most versatile class in this game to a dumbed down ranger which is laughable. I hope you’re trolling and if you are you got me well done.

You mention WvW so I’ll talk about that specifically.

There is no reason you have to use a ranged weapon exclusively or even at all. The fact you can switch to one by weapon swapping and be viable is a testament to the versatility of the class. The vast majority of our weapons and skills are melee oriented. How do you think a ranger feels trying to go melee?

I personally find nothing more gratifying than assessing a stalemate on bridge or at a gate and then making a calculated rush into an enemy formation where I use whirlwind into Hblades and disrupt the entire group in many cases killing several of them. My survival rate doing this isn’t always high in many cases it’s 50% but no other class can do that we’re definitely melee masters.

There are countless smaller skirmishes going on all over the map and at the ourskirts of larger battles you can make a huge difference in without it being the exclusive ranged fest at the walls.

Not sure what else to say I rarely die to ranged alone and find WvW to be a target rich environment even if you melee exclusively.

I find it hard to believe that it wasn’t intentionally left out to begin with.

Great video Flamu. I love the soundtrack.

NIck is right though. You’re in a highly organized group playing against weak players and you’re using a tank spec while your group kills everything. Don’t get me wrong it’s epic to watch but I’m sure you personally could make a vid with any class of any spec in that group and make it look powerful. That really has nothing to do with class balance. The best players will likely be better than weak players no matter what class they’re playing with.

I personally don’t have a strong opinion about Warriors atm because I haven’t done enough pvp yet but your intro seems to imply that Warriors shouldn’t complain about thieves because “look what I can do” on my warrior. Again I bet you could make a vid with any class of any spec and make it look really good.

Dude you have to take yourself out of your sample. All the other players are random in terms of your sample except you have +1 warrior every single game. If you weren’t in those games, and your data is good, you would have had players selecting the slot you were filling at the same rates as the other 9 slots. You played 39 games so 97 – 39 = 58.

That would make warrior second only to Necro as being least popular not the most popular as you assert.

siepher.9408:

@ proeliator

they aren’t all the same as the regen boon. the signet is its own buff as well as the adrenal health trait. what happens is i see three numbers appear on my screen for the regen, one for each source. so while you can’t stack regen BOONs, you can stack regen from different sources

Thanks for the info. Very good to know!!!

I hit the limit for the first time last night chaining 2 DE’s. I probably ran them 8 times each before hitting the limit and I just went somewhere else. It’s really not a big deal I was playing for a few hours already before it happened and I’m surprised it doesn’t happen sooner tbh.