Guild Wars 2

MonMalthias.4763:

Adamantium.3682:

MonMalthias.4763:

One way to make Turrets more mobile without giving them free movement would be to replace the Detonate command with a “Recall” command that then chains into Detonate.

I haven’t read the rest of your post yet, but I had to stop here and say ZOMG SPIRIT RIT!

I’ve said many times in the past that the more we can make a turret Engineer to function like a spirit Ritualist, the better!

Having Draw Spirit on a chain skill after Overcharge or on the Toolbelt before chaining into Detonate would be all that Turret Engineer needs to be viable after all the bugs are addressed. At that point, the only weakness of the build would be to Conditions – for which there is Automated Medical Response and Healing Turret.

That said, care needs to be taken, as I have mentioned before, to not turn Turret Engineer into the next MM Necro or Spirit Ranger – both of which rely largely on AI as a shield and the source of their DPS. Turret control should be made as responsive as possible and Turrets should be strong area denial tools, but Engineer Weapon skills should retain the bulk of the damage output in such builds – with Turrets providing the Control and the Support.

The turrets are not a significant source of control. Rocket turret has a long cooldown long delay knockdown. Net turret just got lol nerfed, rifle turret has no CC, thumper turrets has a laughably long AOE knockback windup…it won’t even survive to use it due to it being frail, flame turret blind is ok though.

But really, truly, engineers are capable of putting all their trait lines towards turrets. WHY should all our traits lines be worth so little that our damage is still primarily our weapons?

Necros can be minion masters, rangers can be spirit masters, a warrior can revolve around his shouts, even engineers can build static discharge or grenades, etc. Every other class has several different trait specing options that make their character revolve around their build.

Why is that bad only for engineer turrets? I don’t understand that. I could easily use grenades all day long and use weapon skills only for utility. Yet it’d magically be bad if turrets pulled the majority of my DPS.

This is crazy talk lol.

Zaviel.1245:

Add conditions back the Turrets… that’s all I want… I used to love turrets despite how even with condition everyone said they were bad. Now there is no justification at all to use them as anything more than to try in vain to make a viable build.

Instead of Toolbelt skill exploding the deployed turrets, I’d like instead for it to pack up the turret and reduce the cooldown based on how much HP it has. If it is at 100% HP then cooldown is removed, makes the turrets much more mobile; if at 50% then reduce CD by 50%, ect.

At the end of the day I’d want conditions back more, but I see both suggestions as steps in the right direction for turrets.

They seem to be absolutely set on the turrets being super weak damage that you cannot increase any reasonable amount with massive drawbacks lol. It’s comical. I’ll be enjoying The Elder Scrolls Online and it’s PVP.

Hate to say it but even if Guild Wars 2 fixes these issues at this point it may be too little too late. They have an extremely tough direct competitor to it’s WvW coming out in the form of The Elder Scrolls Online, and it feels alot more like Dark Age of Camelot.

I wish Guild Wars 2 luck, it really is going to need it.

Anymras.5729:

The last time I was optimistic was when they first acknowledged the thread.
I figured there might be a month or two before the bugs started being resolved.

While it would be nice for them to actually do something about the myriad non-bug issues of Turrets, I just can’t muster any kind of enthusiasm.

Sadly I’m in the same boat. My enthusiasm for Guild Wars 2 in general has waned largely due to these exact type of situations. I can call out other examples like…rangers (not much more needed to say), or some necro abilities like their poison cloud that is still worse than the radiation field (which is a racial ability). Alot of things been around since basically day one that should have been fixed helping to enforce each individual classes meta.

If every class and spec could have received the same amount of attention as the elementalist, warrior, and guardian it would be nice. I say this as an ele main.

But that hasn’t happened and I really doubt they are going to be able to retain me at this point. The Elder Scrolls Online was fun enough I could prolly enjoy it for a year or so while waiting on Camelot Unchained, peeking at EQ Next, and lesser known City of Titans.

I can’t say anything about The Elder Scrolls Online really except that it has the potential for good PVP while still having quite solid PVE. I’ll have to see how it plays out though. NDA prevents me from saying anything specific of course.

Josh Davis.6015:

There’s a considerable amount of bugs being worked on for turrets currently. (Special thanks to Anymras for putting the list together.) I know these things don’t happen as quickly as we (and you) would like to see them, but it’s a comin’.

I’d like to personally ty you for coming to this thread and showing that you guys are listening and do care. Objectively I know this is true anyways, but these reinforcements really help keep people going and invested in the game.

I understand the list is considerable and bugs can be difficult creatures, to say the least. Thank you for your work being a voice here on the forums and a thanks to all who are working on the game. It has some minor issues (like mah turrets!!) but it’s been a great ride and I’m extremely appreciative you guys have provided the opportunity for me to enjoy such a finely crafted game. Collectors edition and have been here since day one for a reason.

Let it not be said it’s a thankless job at least: “Thank you all once again for your hard work.”.

Aegael.6938:

Based dev post.

Truly a miracle. Hope shines on us all this day.

All the plebeians in their non-devposted threads are looking on in awe right now.

I got a dev post on my turret thread faints in shock. Holy moley, der is a Lyssa!!

Adamantium.3682:

As someone else alluded to, some of the suggestions here are great but we can’t do them all at once. First things first, the bugs need to be fixed so we can see where turrets truly are.

The first thing I would change (assuming we aren’t calling bug fixes “changes”) are the trait distributions. Investing in all the turrets is not only very expensive in terms of trait points, but they’re also scattered all over the place.

Once those traits get more consolidated then I would evaluate turrets again at that point and see what they need in terms of mechanics issues.

Hmmm, see, I’m of two minds about this. On one hand that would be nice and convenient. However on the other that is directly reflective of alot of trait lines in this game and I think the investment required would allow them to make those turrets more powerful overall. Afterall if you can split spec and get full turret traits then you cannot very well have them as strong as if it required a full investment.

All of that kind of remains moot in their current state of power though.

Dolt.2731:

No worries friend, Net turret is being nerfed!! Why you may ask? Because the stun/ immobilize on supply crate is being deemed op (it is unless you look at skills with much shorter cd, pin down, spider’s, etc) and it’s entirely to hard to nerf the specific crate on the drop so they are just nerfing net turret altogether, enjoy!!

Yeah I randomly caught that video. Even the guy saying it was kind of amused that he said they would be nerfing a turret. However that doesn’t mean that net turret will stay in that state. Its possible it could end up getting a lower cooldown, higher range, lower time between shots, etc eventually to help make up for that nerf.

Though honestly Net turret is still one of the most consistently useful turrets and one you don’t have to invest in anything for it to be useful.

Anymras.5729:

It would also really help if they bothered to do something about the bloated buglist.

Well, yeah, it’s pretty much my hope that while actually changing some of the skills that are bugged they would fix the bugs related to them.

Stalima.5490:

well i had some ideas on how to improve turrets:

1) remove “metal plating” and “autotool installation”, placing these as baseline for all turrets since they are just about never taken anyway due to how soft turrets are to begin with and these hardly help with that anyway… (plus 2 points to achieve the same thing? cmon)

2) bump “rifled turret barrels” down to 2nd tier to give more diversity in using turrets as a whole.

3) this leaves us with 2 trait slots with nothing so… a new trait for tier 3, “Fortification” which causes your turrets to periodically drop mines (we have a serious lack of mines) in a random location around them to a maximum value per turret. and also significantly increasing mortar health while making also granting protection for the user.[/quote]

With the Armor/HP buffs I have in mind these would be of worth, specifically with flame and thumper turret. The traits would also be what helps keep some sort of limiter on the turrets in sPVP. Because they would be strong at point defense you still have to give up your trait points.

It means turrets will likely be a little weaker than they would be if sPVP didn’t exist, but we still have to make sure we don’t imbalance that area of the game. Though a baseline increase to mortar hp and giving protection to the user would not be uncalled for.

4) because automated response in alchemy is just about useless, replace it with “elixir turret mods” causing turrets to periodically poison nearby enemies for a few seconds and grant a short boon based on the turret to nearby allies. (10 second pulse cooldown 3 second durations?)

I want them to better and to have good condition basing but this seems a little much. Poison is a powerful condition and being able to apply that in an AOE, along with a boon for allies, is too big of an addition and is difficult to justify.

5) this would just leave one tier 1 slot with nothing in for the inventions traitline which im not entirely sure what to do with… perhaps a trait to give additional effects on gadget use? maybe dropping different fields

Same as above, turrets still need to have the investment cost to prevent you from being able to use turrets at full strength along with other things and doing it better than a turret build.

Escadin.9482:

It’s simple:
-fix the ridiculous amount of bugs pleaguing turrets
-let them scale with stats
-see how it works out and revisit the issue (This will be the earliest point to even consider balance changes- I suggest to start with traits)

However it’s also simple that:
-engineers are fine overall in pvp
-some engineer builds are even arguably op in pvp
-pvp matters most regarding balance
-fixing stuff has a much lower priority than toning down outliers for anet
-there’s been no mentioning of any fixes, buffs or anything for a year, nor the upcoming season

I don’t mean to sound offended or to break your hopes but let’s face it: turrets are a toy and will stay that way for quite a long time. Try to have fun anyway or quit your profession due to grief.

I don’t believe this would actually break sPVP balance at all. Rifle Turret even in it’s buffed state is not going to be an sPVP threat at all. Rocket Turret will essentially be the same but slightly harder to destroy, Thumper turret is laughably avoidable. Flame Turret would be the only one that would see any real buff that would matter in sPVP

Geiir.7603:

The problem in WvW isn’t thief spamming stealth to survive, it’s immortal warrior builds, PU mesmers that let AI do their job, condition necros who feel more like a nuclear powerplant and guardians with constant aegis, blocks, retaliation and protection. But you don’t see me whine about them, I learn how to at least try and kill them, or I leave them alone.

Makes you kind of miss the days when the only thing people were worried about were Meteor Showers.

I dunno why ANET hates turrets lol, they need some love. They do less damage than other options so are not competitive in normal content and can barely survive normal content much less harder content. Also the only way to boost turret damage outside of traits is condition damage, and with the removal of Rifle Turret bleeds that only works for 2 turrets now.

My suggestion:

1. Buff turret armor and hp. Thumper turret gets a large increase, flame turret gets a medium increase, all other turrets get a small increase. They are pitifully easy to kill, have large hitboxes, and are stationary.

2. Give Rifle Turret a 1 second bleed on all shots, both normally and during automatic fire. While keeping the vulnerability. There are still better options lol. Also add the 1 second bleed to the Surprise Shot toolbelt skill.

3. Give Thumper Turret a 1 second burn when you use it’s “Thump” active. It’s a slow windup skill that you can only use every 30 seconds.

4. Add a 20% cooldown reduction into the trait Autotool Installation on top of the auto-repair.

5. In WvW zones turrets should get a 50% AOE damage reduction buff to give them some small chance in heck not to immediately melt and then be on a long cooldown.

EDIT: removed accelerant packed turrets suggestion as it was inaccurate.

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol, rangers either have to bunker spec to survive my thief, and thus they can never kill me. If they spec dps, I can two shot them. Let’s not even discuss their laughably broken pets. ANET basically admitted that they cannot fix pets since pet moves are tied to the coding of all mob moves, lol.

While they cannot fix their pathing and melee hitting issues, they sure as heck could fix their WvW survivability. All they have to do is give them a massive AOE damage resistance buff and an always on minor regen buff while in a WvW zone. In WvW zone? Pet has da buffs. Not in WvW zone? Pet no has da buffs.

Regardless of their actual impact high stealth time thieves will always be the bane of other players. Because there will never be anything more annoying than someone who can stay invisible most of the time, attack from a variety of ranges, and be virtually impossible to kill or pin down if they play well. Yet at the same time you almost cannot stop them from harassing you.

It’s like the Teemo of Guild Wars 2.

This game was not designed for WvW, WvW was far more popular than they ever anticpated. It’s as simple as that really.

For a WvW game you need to simplify alot of things to make the servers and bandwidth be able to keep up. Graphics are also typically lower to help computers be able to play it effectively. GW2 did not do these simplifications because this was not the game type they were aiming for.

At this point there is relatively little they can do. The framework of the system is not built to handle what you are asking of it and they simply do not have the option to completely rebuild, nor would it be financially wise to rebuild for a relatively small % of situations.

The fact that WvW works as well as it does, which is better than Warhammer Online (I hate you EA for ruining that), is a lucky accident. Be happy it works well enough for you to be this invested in it and like it this much. It means this game style will be made better by a new game in the future one day. (Possibly Camelot Unchained).

The Game Slayer.7632:

You state there are “roles” and such, but really you’re completely wrong. A-net stated themselves that you should be able to play the game however you feel, without any types of “roles”. You are the one missing the point.

I believe Anet was referencing the holy MMO trinity (tank, healer, DPS) when they were talking about non-specific class roles. I also believe they were purposeful in the design of classes to be more effective in specific roles in WvW. [/quote]

They were actually quite honest that at the beginning WvW was a complete afterthought and they had no idea it would be as popular as it is. They even said at one time it was not supposed to be balanced.

They have since changed their minds, but there was definitely no ideas of defining WvW roles. That is something that happened by sheer accident and player innovation.

Scrambles.2604:

Individual skill is diffused in a zerg setting, but you could argue in an even Zerg v zerg, the zerg with the most skilled individuals will come out on top.

Personally, I enjoy rolling with the zerg on my thief. I know blast finishers and stealth rezes don’t create a strong argument, but it always seems clutch in practice.

Recently, i’ve taken a liking to immobilizing stragglers from enemy zergs. Since i’m faster than most players, i like to chop that one up to a contribution.

And the other night, i helped with a zerg push by rushing the enemy zerg by myself, and shadowstepping back to my zerg. As the enemies jumped on the chance to gank me, they were caught out of position by my zerg and we ended up taking the tower.

Class composition and builds are actually extremely important in zerg vs zerg warfare. Thief really doesn’t have a competitive role in this. You can run 1-2 token thieves for really niche jobs, but that’s about it and you’d likely still get more mileage out of another Warrior or Guardian.

I really don’t think this will change either, even if Warriors/Guardians get de-emphaized because it will be next to impossible to give Thief truly viable team utility considering the shenanigans they have access to with little or no investment. If nothing else sheerly because those capabilities keep the HP pool so low in a failed attempt to balance those shenanigans.

I think alot of thieves miss the point. Yes, it’s fun to troll entire groups of people by spamming stealth and black powder/heartseeker until a situation arrives allowing you to gank one of them.

However abilities like this are actually keeping thief from being buffed in the ways that it needs. It’s very difficult to buff thief to be more viable in a team/zerg setting without imbalancing it thanks to some of it’s stealth shenanigans.

If you think that’s fine, then ok. Just be aware there are plenty of thieves out there that actually want to have builds allowing them to be a respectable member of a large force, instead of the token thief out of 20 players.

Ok folks lets look at this logically.

Before the patch you could soak up overflow damage by being in death shroud.
Before the patch people were intentionally using this to mitigate damage.
This is evidently not an intended use of deathshroud, so they changed it.

So at this point you have 3 schools of thought:

#1. WWWWWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

#2. The ability to use deathshroud this way was potentially getting in the way of necros getting a buff. Now that this capability is gone they will be able to test and observe if necros can perform up to their desires and if they do not they will buff them in some way.

#3. Necro’s will still be good in other areas of the game buy may need sPVP specific buffs.

Tobbygnome.6793:

You are correct, however my post has nothing to do with that. My one and only point is that WvW is not a controlled PvP environment, it is a battlefield with unbalanced group numbers fighting each other with or without siege in or out of towers using level 1-80 characters and wearing any assortment of gear in the game.

This is not the correct environment to base judgements of class balance off. You said you have no idea whether or not this is considered ok in sPVP, as far as i know, it has been unmentioned.

To add, yes if something is so undeniably broken in WvW that it needs to be changed on a class, it will be, but not insignificant and strictly minor issues like a spell being 1/2 a second too long in cast time.

I can understand you saying that it is more difficult to ascertain judgements. But to say that the environment is not the correct place to judge a classes effectiveness in that environment is pretty illogical honestly.

If someone was so flippant to sPVP balance people would be outraged lol. Yet sPVP actually has a far harsher meta than WvW ironically, with many more builds and more classes left in the dust.

Rennoko.5731:

Balance around WvW is a bad idea unless they plan to cut it out from PVE and SPVP specifically.

[snip]

I think it is all a moot point though, because they don’t balance around WvW at all, other than the heavy handed nerf to confusion and retalation because they were being horribly abused.

They have already directly stated that they are balancing the 3 modes independently not too long back. They didn’t when the game was released because they didn’t anticipate the popularity of WvW. They acknowledged this was a screw up on their part.

Also you forgot to mention marks. It’s rare to see a battle go by vs a good group without a dozen marks being left on the ground afterwards. Remember that you can self combo weakness with your marks.

I know there might be a few things to figure out, but they either need to fix their broken AI or they need to give you some sort of control, even if it’s a limited “sic em” and “return” button setup.

Make a new UI element if you have to but danged if the minions are more a novelty than an effective build as they currently are.

Tobbygnome.6793:

WvW is not balanced around that type of play, this is why ‘Structured PvP’ exists. Please don’t critically analyze class balance based off a battlefield game mode.

WvW actually showcases more teamwork in more situations. While small scale is important, large scale is the ultimate driver of victory and as you going higher and higher tier the importance of large scale combat grows beyond just being very important and becomes nearly completely dominant.

While tactics can do a great deal to help turn the tide of battle, and execution can likewise do so, class composition has become increasingly important over the games life span as gimmicks such as turtling and arrow carts have been balanced out.

The majority of WvW is definitely balanced around large scale combat even if havoc squads do have their roles.

The developers have already admitted fault in not properly anticipating the popularity of WvW and that is why they have promised to have 3 sets of balance rules from here on out. sPVP is not the only mode classes are balanced around and you will see more individual mode balance changes as time goes on, as they have said themselves.

I want to clarify that the tainted shackles immobilize on it’s own can be reasonably easily avoided, albeit it might cost you a dodge that you may need.

However Tainted Shackles when done by multiple necro’s staggered and/or combined with pulls, other CC, lines/rings of warding results in a death sentence. You’d be pretty much hosed before even considering that you’ll be eating wells too.

This is a team game and many things gain in power significantly with teamwork. Stability can stop pulls and lines/rings of warding, but immobilize/cripple/chill must be cleansed and chain immobilizing is very common.

Not only that but in the intense WvW game making someone waste their dodges, get immobilized, or be forced out of position often meets with fatal results if you are fighting good opponents.

Azraeel.1238:

You know nothing, John Snow! I mean Ralathar. Have you tried a necromancer yourself?

Yes, it would be fair to say I have 100+ hours playing necromancer.

If not, then stand down and stop making yourself look bad. Necromancers are tank-ish without being specced into? Really? If a necromancer can last few seconds in Death Shroud thanks to Skill #4, once that over, with the lowest burst damage can throw the Necromancer out of DS, and without any points in SR, refilling life force would be painful. Unlike most of the other classes, we lack mobility. Have you played ping pong yourself? Well, imagine yourself being the ball.

You have to utilize active defense. Necro’s have a very nice baseline HP and have death shroud. Necro’s also have good access to weakness. Though this might lead you to believe they can facetank alot, their tankiness actually excels more in the sustain department. With any weapon set, spec, utility combo, and proper play you can easily outlast similar spec’s of other classes barring running into a hard counter to your spec.

I myself am only perhaps a bit above average at this and even I manage that. A friend of mine is not quite immortal but sometimes it feels like he is. He is a far better necro player than I.

We even have to sacrifice stun breaks (Which suck with their long cooldowns) just to have better AOE. Mind I say what other classes bring to the party other than right out damage? In my opinion, Elementalists are more important to have in group than Necromancers, they can support AND do damage with MORE mobility. Same for Guardians. Mesmers not only do they have good utilities, they have amazing AOE fields with clones that makes zergs harder to fight. So Necromancers are far from being the best in WvW.

I would agree with you on Elementalist, but I main Elementalist and during the recent few patches the meta has ironically moved away from us, even though we have received buffs. The new meta is a tanky group primarily composed of warriors, guardians, and necros. A few ele’s and mesmers are allowed to tag along as utility support basically.

These groups are able to do the vast bulk of their damage on the run without any stopping or casting and are thus able to easily avoid and/or mitigate the bulk of ground targeted damage. Static Field no longer has quite the effect it used to because people have learned and with the high % of guardians stability is rampant. Frozen Ground is steered around or leaped through at need.

Now against trash groups? Yeah, my Elementalist still wrecks. Against the good groups using this new meta, ground targetted effects are pretty worthless and with a combination of heavy line/ring of warding usage and mass immobs it’s difficult to dodge the well/cleave damage. (Though ironically if you do dodge it you are left nearly completely unharmed).

Even with the landing of these abilties the new meta is made of people built very tanky and heavy, relying on focused damage CC to get their kills. (The damage is still very high, I’ve seen extremely tanky people drop 100-0 instantly if caught within the devastation area).

Do not argue with what I just said because they are simple facts, not personal opinion.

I know it seems odd to you, and I likely wouldn’t have had the exact opinion I do now before seeing it used properly by a good group with the new meta composition, but Necros are an issue atm, along with Guardians and Warriors.

I don’t care if it calls for the nerfing of my elementalist main too, I want parity between the classes and I play all classes.

Animi.4617:

2 months ago if I fought with someone they told me, that " hmm I never saw a necro playing this good, you play well with it". Now if I fight with someone they telling that " OMG necros are soooooo OP". The funny thing I didn’t change anything on my build, but I’m became op….

While it’s true that you kept your build the same, you undeniably received a fair amount of buffs to your build. Necro buffs were pretty heavy handed and affected all specs, though they affected some more heavily.

I won’t say that necro’s are sooooo OP, but specific aspects of necro’s are currently a little too good in WvW. There are alot of things you can leverage in WvW that you cannot in sPVP.

Oldbugga.7029:

There is a lot of emotional responses in this thread. I would like to address just one of those to see where it is really coming from. This is not a personal attack on the poster…it is an analysis of his statements.

They got buffed across the board last patch and with the extra free CC, extra condition damage, Spectral Wall change, wells all got lesser CD’s, Death shroud no longer removes spectral effects, Unholy Feast now boon strips, got increased life force gains, had death shroud buffed, etc.

Keep in mind the devs implemented these changes AND the necros didn’t just pluck them out of the air. And why do you think the devs decided to implement these buffs to the necros? I think they have a lot more data up their sleeves concerning profession balance and viabilities than one person’s potentially lopsided experiences. I doubt they put their hands into the buff lucky-dip barrel. I would tend to back the devs judgement here than what appears to be a disgruntled player.

The devs have shown several times that they are not perfect. Biggest in recent memory is arrow carts. They are good, not perfect, and with so many changes the chance of missing the mark a little is pretty high.

With such a massive spike in Necromancer power it’s not surprising that it was overdone in some ways. Especially since necros were already known by the experienced to be way better than the general opinion on them was.

This just does not make sense and is purely annecdotal at best. The evidence is in the representation of the professions in all styles of play….not some fabricated “factoid” created to support a particular opinion with emotive language ("massive???).

The more changes and larger the impact the higher the chance of error. All builds were buffed to some degree in necros and some were buffed quite alot.

And exactly what is wrong with necros having a little sunshine at last? We were second lowest on the population stakes (and only marginally above the lowest….older data but all that is publicly available).You seem to be hinting that other classes are not “entitled” to some “following” because they might actually now prove useful in particular circumstances. All scenarios will prove beneficial for one or more professions at times.

Them not being used was not the result of necros being bad but rather playing a good necro being more difficult than some other classes. At the same time however the meta was already quickly shifting heavily into necros as people were realizing jut how good they really were along with some of the small boosts they received.

Summary: A lot of personal opinion built on annecdotal assumptions that do not stand scrutiny or are prejudice in their own way against the necro class.

I personally find the necro quite effective and it’s one of the easier classes for me to be effective in and stay alive in for WvW. I’ve seen good friends use the necro to great effect before any of these recent patches. I don’t have any prejudice against necro, in fact I quite enjoy necro and encourage people to try them. Or I did until recently, I don’t want people to roll into the bandwagon class and just be angry when it gets nerfed.

People get too attatched to their class. By comparison Elementalist is actually being pushed out of this meta except as field support. Elementalist is my main, but I have enjoyed good standing in the meta for quite some time. If Elementalist becomes alot lesser used that’s fine, we’ve had a good long time in the light.

The goal is to make EVERY class be able to bask in the light, not rotate the meta constantly of which classes get to be in the light at any given time. For exmaple, Rangers, great roamers but totally out of luck in zerg battles. Even thieves have their unique niche and can be more useful in zerg battles I’m afraid. Though it’s certainly not their forte.

This is a WvW thread, the meta was already including necros alot more pre-patch. Post patch there is really little reason to run much more than Warriors, Necromancers, and Guardians. You keep a few ele’s and mesmer’s around for the utility.

Basically the tanky meta of zergs was strong before and the large buff to necro strengthened it significantly. Necro’s are not the only one’s who need a look at to provide more variety, just the biggest thing atm. Guardians are right behind them in the “need to be looked at in WvW” department.

Reason Necro is on my list above guardian is that Necro’s are innately tanky played well, wheras Guardians need to spec for it. Likewise Necro’s have become a core part of the zerg damage due to the high baseline damage of wells and the ability to easily keep opponents in it with the Guardian Warding skills and/or immobilizes.

I’ve been on the fence for a bit, but I finally saw some groups using the combination to it’s potential and like a few of the metas before this the realistic counter is to use the same thing.

sorrow.2364:

Nearly zero downside?
It stacks only 3 torment, which is laughable at best, so I think it is not the problem.

Then there is the AoE immobilize and damage, which is, by far, the easiest effect to predict and dodge, second only to the elementalist’s Dragon Tooth.
You don’t only have an huge green spectral bind with the Necromancer yelling “prepare to dodge”, but you can also completely cancel the effect through going out of the skill range.

Zero downsides? I wouldn’t say that.

This is a skill you didn’t even have shortly ago that can force a dodge and cause extra damage, both in an AOE. It’s cast time is almost nothing. No, there are no real downsides to it.

While it’s true it is easy to dodge in a 1 vs 1, WvW very much is not about that. If you read my post this thread is in regards to WvW. And in WvW not only will you have a billion other things to dodge and worry about, you will have multiple necromancers using this ability and others who use abilities that synergize with it. Example of this synergy is Ring of Warding and wells, which is currently being used constantly these days.

Draehl.2681:

Speaking as a power necro this skill is marginally useful as-is. Increase the cast time and I doubt I’d use it at all…

Or increase the cast time and give it a decent direct damage coefficient when the immobilize hits. Then let Life Transfer apply a 1s bleed per hit so that’s useful for condi builds. I hate dead skills. They should all be useful for all builds. Maybe in differing ways, but useful never the less.

As a power necro the usage of the skill would be in combination with your wells. Both Axe and Dagger have viable skills that can set up the landing of the immobilize unless they cleanse it or dodge. Dagger specifically already has an immobilize that this can stack with used with good timing.

Enemy immobilized in wells = dead enemy. This wouldn’t be a skill I’d give up utility skills for, but as an extra freebie it can still be used effectively for a power build. Any torment damage is just extra. Especially since if you are using life transfer you can just qued Tainted Shackles up before it for more damage and a possible immobilize.

sorrow.2364:

If you don’t mind AoE torment damage and AoE immobilize, than why you think it should have longer casting time?

Sorry, but to me it makes no sense at all. There are a bunch of skills in this game that has as low casting time and can’t be countered by just going out of range.

Because after testing it out for quite awhile it’s incredibly good and has nearly zero downside towards using. By comparison Life Transfer can be a powerful ability but isn’t near as useful if you are not power spec and you can be interrupted. Tainted Shackles isn’t as overtly powerful so I wouldn’t want it to be interrupted and go on cooldown, but at the same time the immobilize is really really strong in WvW and the damage is essentially completely free with it’s cast time.

Whether in a group vs group battle, 1 vs 1, or small havoc squad it’s a really strong ability regardless of your spec.

In current form the Death Shroud skill Tainted Shackles is too strong. I don’t mind the AOE Torment damage or the AOE immobilize, but it needs to have a longer cast time.

Currently you can cast Tainted shackles and do anything else while it plays out. with a 1/4 second cast you cannot really be interrupted, it doesn’t take any appreciable time to cast, and it works even if you drop death shroud or get stunned once cast. This makes countering this powerful ability nearly impossible and makes using it a no-brainer.

My Suggestion: Change the cast time from 1/4 second to 3/4 second or even a full second. Give a chance for it to be interrupted and use the cast time to help time gate it’s additional DPS a little bit.

This is the perspective of a WvW player mind you. I have no idea whether or not this is considered ok in sPVP but in WvW it is an insanely powerful ability no matter what build the necromancer is.

Yes wells stack right now and they are highly used in WvW groups because of this. They were used before the last patch but now they are used 10 times more thanks to the insane necro buffs including the ability to AOE immob with tainted shackles, especially considered tainted shackles takes no channel time and cannot be stopped while also allowing the necro to continue doing other things.

The reason they are viewed as OP atm is because they are. They got buffed across the board last patch and with the extra free CC, extra condition damage, Spectral Wall change, wells all got lesser CD’s, Death shroud no longer removes spectral effects, Unholy Feast now boon strips, got increased life force gains, had death shroud buffed, etc.

With such a massive spike in Necromancer power it’s not surprising that it was overdone in some ways. Especially since necros were already known by the experienced to be way better than the general opinion on them was.

In WvW they were already being increasingly used as a core component in groups for example. Now they are a core component of groups you cannot ignore and be competitive without.

I agree Axe #1 could use a little love, however first the necro class a whole might need to be dealt with. They got some pretty strong buffs last patch and I’m not sure it’s balanced to be completely honest.

It’s not that rallying is a bad idea or that it’s totally broken atm, it’s that it’s too easy to achieve.

For example, if you required a higher threshold, such as 25% of someone’s hp to achieve a rally you could significantly cut down on rallies. If rezzing near a battle was 50% as fast as rezzing in combat, people would be rezzed mid fight alot less.

Right now rallies can be out of control because you can faceroll and tag 10-20 people before being downed and rally when ANY of them die because you did like 5% damage to them.

This would be a very nice quality of life change.

1. is a fan of burning arrows hitting multiple targets. Supposed to be a 2 second burn base duration, currently bugged to have 1 second burn. #5 is 6 stacks of bleed for like 20 seconds. F1 is an extremely large area of effect damage + burn patch that pulses every 3 seconds for 2 seconds of burning, up to 5 pulses. 3 of the 6 longbow attacks are multi-target attacks.

Warrior has a trait called Precise Strikes in the Arms line that causes 3 seconds of bleeding 33% of the time on crits. With even a modest crit rate you will proc this often with AOE damage. Deep cuts is a Adept level trait 10 points into the line which gives you this minor trait, Deep cuts increases the duration of bleeds by 50%. With rare veggie pizza that’s 90% bleed duration (100% when wielding sword) and 50% burning duration when wielding longbow.

I currently have a warrior that is built 0/10/0/30/30 focusing around the longbow and Burst skills/adrenaline. As part of tactics I took the warhorn trait as well and wield mainhand sword to compliment the horn.

Longbow is far far superior condition damage in group situations and is superior condition damage in single target situations too thanks to pin down, combustive shot, and fan of fire.

Ironically Longbow does very good power damage too, and my Arcing Arrows regularly crit for over 3-4k with full Rampager’s gear. with all the AOE and my 80%+ crit rate (with fury) I proc bleeds constantly.

My bleed damage is a little over 100 dmg per stack per second.
My Burn damage is a little over 600 damage per second.

IMO Rifle only has 3 things over Longbow. Killshot (single target and quite counterable), Knockback, and spammable cripple.

Oh and for people staying in your AOE field. Zerg battles that’s an autowin. Single target you have Pin down and Flurry.

Here is my build below (It’s a little outdated on the site but too lazy to redo on another site atm. Just replace quick bursts with burst mastery and it’s accurate enough.)

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/warrior/?8.3|c.1o.h9.g.1o.h1i|3.1o.hf|1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3.1o.a3|1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.1o.63.8b.63|0.a3.0.u49a.u42b|30.d|5y.6d.6e.69.6m|e

I wonder how many people even realize the potential damage that Pin Down does? I bet alot still think it’s ONLY a root lolol.

If you totaled up the value of everything in each chest you do indeed get alot more ectos. You get 15+ silver, siege, badges, and greens or better. Each chest is literally worth at least 1 ecto, in some lucky cases multiple ectos.

Considering our ecto buying ability from WvW before was pretty close to zero, this does indeed = alot more ectos.
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I’ll let you go back to ignoring the value of half the contents of each chest now.

zastari.1730:

Ralathar.7236:

sostronk.8167:

CC nerf? Not really. That’s what stun breaks/condition removal are for. The only CC I really have an issue with is immobilized which bugs for me and I frequently cannot break where basically my skills won’t work because there is some kind of lag issue with immobilized where it resets me in the location after I used a stun break/condition removal.

Stability is a counter to mass CC, not stunbreak. Stunbreak is more like a GTFO if you are stunned. But it will do little about you immediately eating another stun. However stability is also able to be boon stripped. Not all classes have as much boon coverage as guardian or ele after all. Rangers and necros for example are much more vulnerable to being stripped of their stability.

In all of our testing and GvGs we have been unable to reliably strip stability off of the majority of a group with good boon control even when running a necro and boonstrip on shatter mesmer heavy group composition. If your group is not providing enough boons to maintain stability on your frontline during a push then you need to rethink your group composition.

VS Ele’s, Guardians, and perhaps Warriors boons tripping would be difficult indeed. Vs the others however boon stripping has a much better chance of removing stability and you are almost certainly removing important boons they need. There is also the corrupt boons option that can be combined with a focus on a target that will quickly end a guardians day. Also don’t forget that Necro’s remove up to 3 boons with Spinal Shiver’s alone.

If you are having issues removing stability then you mean reliably stripping stability off of zergs. Because you can most certainly reliably remove stability off of single players with a minimum of coordination or perhaps none at all.

Boons could also most certainly be removed in an area extremely effectively if people bothered to take the skills and traits that enable such things. That may not be the meta now, but it will likely show it’s head in the meta one day. Example of such a trait is “Searing Flames” for guardian. Not viewed as a great trait currently due to the 20 sec CD per target, but metas change and the trait patch will be incoming soon.

FWIW, I’m part of one of those CC heavy Maguuma groups you’re running into. No, CC does not help the “zerg”, it helps the group with better group cohesion. We put heavy soft CC on groups with stability uptime and we dish hard CC on them the instant we see stability run out.

CC most certainly does help the zerg. Stability coverage, CC density per player, and boon removal per player all tend to increase, sometimes dramatically, with player count vs smaller forces. This is especially true with good organized teams.

However even with FA we have run into a lot of CC, not because they are as good as you guys but simply because of sheer numbers of people.

CC and positional control are pivotal parts of winning a group battle. They’re mostly well set to make an interesting meta. The only one that is kind of broken is immobilize. However, there are not any uncapped AoE immobilizes (unlike cripples, stuns, and pushes), and most of them have a short enough duration that traiting accordingly or using food/runes that reduce condition duration can largely mitigate the impact of it.

I think CC can still be a part of the meta but be a little more balanced for the individual players. Regardless of what the game is I don’t think being CC’d from 100% to 0% should be possible unless you literally die in 5 seconds or under.

When you can be CC’d for 10+ seconds quite easily or be CC’d for approximately half of a several minute battle this is a bad mechanic. It runs into both balance issues and playtime enjoyment issues. It will never be fun for the average victim to be unable to act consistently until they die.
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If stun breaks gave even a short 2-3 second immunity it would counter this quite handily, but as it is stun breaks can be rendered worthless by the exact same thing they are meant to counter. But I felt such immunities could be abused by some of these stun breaks so I suggested a very soft diminishing returns instead.

Atherakhia.4086:

Was there a point to this thread? Are we supposed to be coming up with ideas to make the thief more ‘thiefy’? Or are we just trying to justify the class’ burst and stealth? ANet has made it perfectly clear that the Thief class is meant to the burstiest of the bursty and stealth gets complaints regardless of the game you’re playing. Assassin or Thief (Shadowbane had both which was quite unique) means very little in most games.

The difference is basically options, build variety, and playstyle flavor. The vast majority of effective builds atm are focused around the assassin aspect because that is what the framework of the class makes effective.

Support and utility are pretty weak compared to all other classes Possible exception being a boon sharing build. But that’s a single support/utility build that might be competitive vs several options for each other class.

More options would also mean 90% of the thieves out there wouldn’t be 2-3 builds people want the crap nerfed out of.

Stooperdale.3560:

I think first of all we should remember that this is a combat driven game. We’re not in the business of stealing anything from Zaitan or even stealing anything in the fractals. We’re in the business of killing boss mobs. The game concept pushes us away from the thief ideal before we’ve done anything, unless you’re a thief in the style of Conan the Barbarian. In terms of skills we’re not particularly close to an assassin but probably closer to an elusive ninja with our use of blinding, smoke, and shadowsteps.

I think a number of the best thief utilities are fine even if they do not initially seem as good as other classes. Traps and venoms certainly need an improvement. Another thief problem is that we provide support with conditions rather than boons and conditions work poorly against champions and large numbers of enemies (fractal armies).

Look at the other professions and what they can do for support that isn’t directly combat. Look what thief can do. I don’t think it’s unfair to ask thief to have the build options that focus more on sneaky stuff, utility, and support.

Like where is throw dirt (blind/fumble) or cheap shot (Vulnerability/cripple/daze)? We have explosives, blinding powder, and black powder shot but no smoke bomb? Thieves are clever and bring all sorts of dirty fighting and utilize gadgets, tricks, and gizmos. Where are they all at? All we have is more “this will help you assassinate someone”.

Almost all of the utilities that get regularly used are stealth, shadow-step, or directly assist in spike damage. The rest are underwhelming, much like the engineers gadgets.

Anubarak.3012:

Sounds like you actually have no idea how to play a thief?!?
Smokescreen is one the best support skills we have… Did you ever do grawlfractal > 40?
Shadow Refuge explain them what to do… my mates know how it works and it saved our fights many times
Signet of Agility My panic button… Its a must have in PvE if you are skilled offensively with 25-30-0-0-15 or 30-30-10-0-0 or 25-30-10-0-5

Smokescreen is total crap compared to wall of reflection or feedback. Heck swirling winds is better. Whether something is useful or not and whether things are competitive or not are two different things.

Shadow Refuge can be good in specific situations with mindful people. It can also screw over other thieves and without voice communication it’s very easy for even good players to run through if already moving and cancel the stealth (or have a projectile in air cancel the stealth). It’s just not reliable or effective at support as intended thanks to revealed upon leaving outside of voice comms.

Signet of Agility is alright, but only really works for damage focused folks. The endurance fill fits but the condition drop for yourself and allies just feels out of place and tacked on. I’d rather have it dropped off of this signet and added to another where it better fits. It’s not about being “pure” as another person suggested, it’s about build variety. Ironically the condition removal would fit better on signet of shadows.

Traps:
Pretty much terrible overall. Weak effects and narrow effect radius. In a game where the thief is wielding pistols and launching explosive arrows he uses a terrible trip wire that breaks after 1 use, a poison trap that only hits a tiny rectangular area though his ARROWS carry enough poison to saturate entire zergs in seconds, an abush trap that calls in a single very weak NPC, and the only decent one is the shadow trap that teleports you stealthed to your victim (assassin lol).

Where is the booby trap explosives when I use explosive arrows? Why is the poison trap a tiny area when the arrows are larger areas and spammable? Why does ambush call a single very weak NPC? Why not at least 2 of em to make it worthwhile? Why do traps reveal you if you are stealthed?

Venoms:
OK in their current form they still feel weak and situational. I supposed that is expected when you consider that you can share them via trait so they have to be weakish. Still the fact they are designed as an apply, use, wait on cooldown skill means that they are terrible in fights that are not over right away.

Thieves Guild:
This is actually decent. One of the thieves carries pistols, one blinds, one uses scorpion wire. not a true supportive skills, but definitely a utility skill and very thiefesque calling in members of your shadowy guild to help fight with clever moves.

Otherwise though: Where is the supportive elite? Every other class has a supportive elite, where is the supportive elite for thieves?

Bottom Line:
Thieves are assasins currently. They are not tricky, do not improvise well, do not have many support options or utility and the support options they have in the form of thrill of the crime and bountiful theft feel tacked on and lacking.

You want a clever trickster class? Play a Mesmer. You want an assassin claiming to be a thief? Play thief.

Just as the title says the Thief profession is not a thief, it’s an Assassin. I realize this is since it basically is the Assassin from the original Guild Wars but this is the source of most of it’s issues in Guild Wars 2.

Lets look at an overview of the two concepts:

1. Assassin is a person who sneaks in, kills 1 person or a few select people, and then either dies or escapes. It’s all about getting in, killing, and getting out.

2. A thief is someone of dubious origins who tends to do just about anything for money. This ranges from petty theft to assassination. Almost always in a bad situation thieves have become very adaptable and use any means they have to accomplish their goal and escape. This usually leaves them quick witted, acrobatic, dexterous, and able to improvise at will.

So what is the difference really? UTILITY and VERSATILITY!!

Thief in Guild Wars 2 right now has little if any utility and versatility. They are not clever, not wiley, have zero improvisation. The only things they really have atm is stealth, evasion, and killing.

I mean look at all the skills: what provides utility/support?

Heals:
No ally friendly heals. The other classes without a heal that also helps allies are mesmer, elementalist, and warrior. All 3 have quite alot of utility and support if they spec for it. Thief has 1 buff sharing build if they spec for it and can provide weak and inconsistent regen.

So what does the thief have for support and utility outside of CC?

Weapon Skills
Bubkiss, zero, nada. The only other class that does not have some sort of utility/supportive weapon is Engineer. They have a plethora of other utility/supportive options.

Utility skills:

Caltrops:
One of the few support/utility skills it’s a nice example of what kind of support the thief should be able to offer more often. A nice tricky slow patch of good duration and area that also does good bleed damage.

Smokescreen:
A weak and terrible version of wall of reflection. It’s placed at your feet and parallel to you making placement and angling difficult, it only blocks projectiles, and it has a 3 second shorter duration. Used more as a smoke field for blast finishers than it is for it’s intended purpose.

Shadow Refuge: Would be a good support tool if not for it’s limitations. Placed mid battle without direct communication it’s just weak healing and a dark field. Allies will almost instantly break stealth or exit the area. Used most commonly as a selfish tool for the thief to stealth himself or stomp people. Sometimes used as a ghetto support tool to rez downed allies assuming they are not attacking. Will actually mess up other thieves by giving them revealed unexpectedly many times.

Blinding Powder:
Suffer all the same issues as shadow refuge with less benefits. But can at least be used as a blind. Kind of redundant blind with “Cloaked in Shadow” though.

Signet of Shadows:
AOE blind signet YES!! Oh wait, just like the ele it’s tied to our movement speed. Meaning activating it makes us alot more likely to die in the long run. And no way to maintain passive benefits of signets on a thief….boo.

Signet of Agility:
Refilling endurance and curing a condition for nearby allies on a 30 second timer is actually kinda nice. Too bad the signet itself and the signet related traits are all offensively based and the active is supportive.

Scorpion Wire:
This is actually pretty thiefy and useful. Some of that random utility you would expect a thief to have.

Yeah they need a little extra kick. Traps and smokescreen ain’t that good. Venoms are interesting, on 1 hand 45 second is a little much, on the other hand there is venomshare. Feels like they are built to suck because it’s possible to share them.

I did have a thread before on traps and smokescreen located here though:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Traps-and-Smoke-Screen-change-ideas/first#post1985702

Excalibur.9748:

Thief is not OP In WvW. Most guilds want guardian, mesmer, warrior, elementalist only. Thief is low tier.

That’s because Thief does it’s best work away from the zerg and while they CAN contribute meaningfully to the zerg those 4 classes are pretty much built for it.

Thieves can make a crazy difference on a WvW map, but they do it in a different way is all.

Jinks.2057:

The devil is snowboarding…..Rala just dropped a kitten talking line

OMG!!!! BAN HIM!!!!!

I think it says something when even I’m saying stuff like that.

sostronk.8167:

CC nerf? Not really. That’s what stun breaks/condition removal are for. The only CC I really have an issue with is immobilized which bugs for me and I frequently cannot break where basically my skills won’t work because there is some kind of lag issue with immobilized where it resets me in the location after I used a stun break/condition removal.

I suspected it would be an issue one day, I finally ran into groups running massive amounts of CC. I can tell you straight up that even if the fight gets won it is no fun to spend 3/4 of the fight on your face or stunned.

Stability is a counter to mass CC, not stunbreak. Stunbreak is more like a GTFO if you are stunned. But it will do little about you immediately eating another stun. However stability is also able to be boon stripped. Not all classes have as much boon coverage as guardian or ele after all. Rangers and necros for example are much more vulnerable to being stripped of their stability.

This is also one of those things that actually helps the zerg more. For example my current WvW matchup is Maguuma and Fort Aspenwood. Fort Aspenwood has tons of people compared to us so we eat alot of CC just from the sheer numbers. Maguuma meanwhile actually has a heavy CC focus in it’s groups. We are regularly providing feasts of Saffron Bread now just to give people a chance to survive the chain CC.

Quells.2498:

I don’t understand why anyone is worried about Thieves resetting the fight. Sure it’s frustrating when a kill gets away but it doesn’t really matter. The only thing you should worry about is burst Thieves but only if you are roaming alone in WvW.

1. The ability to reset the fight means the ability to run whenever they feel like as well. You cannot reset if you cannot run. People dislike not being able to kill people who can plainly kill them. Specifically if few or no people can kill those said people.

2. It means they can make you blow your cooldowns, reset, and then fight you weakened with no loss to themselves done right. Even if they use cooldowns they still come out with the advantage as they can choose whether or not to re-engage.

3. Against many people they can do this repeatedly while leaving conditions on the enemy. Killing them after 2-3 resets when only one person gets a full out of combat heal while the other does not. (Or heals up via stealth)

Taobella, paragraph spacing, Text organization, maybe even a little bulleting. Because few people are going to read those blobs of text.

LOL nice fights tonight. Just wish Ebay had a few more players to sling out there. Feels like we were perpetually facing outmanned tonight but that didn’t stop us from diving into the fray and even taking alot of our stuff back.

Expect to see Ebay and PK out there fighting no matter how many waves of men FA sends at us. Also, Maguuma, I want to hate you from the old days but I find myself respecting alot of the stuff you’ve done. Might try to NOT backslam us while we are pushing FA out of your borderlands (to get our little corner of it) a bit less, but otherwise pretty solid.

But seriously, FA:

I keep trying to look for the good guild groups and organization but it gets lost amongst your zergs that contain your entire population cap in once place. And geez, I know it’s alot of alts and PVE’rs but you guys die so very easily.

Quells.2498:

Any ability that adds protection, retaliation or invulnerability makes a Burst Thief much less effective. Any ability that chills, cripples or channels makes a Stealth Thief much less effective. Now go try it out.

I’ve ran on an engineer with over 2,500 armor and 23k+ health and been splattered by a thief in under 3 seconds. Retaliation is based off of power and was recently nerfed in WvW, though it is currently broke using the old values in the borderlands. Not all classes have long durations of protections available and they are on long cooldowns, thief can just reset the fight and know you are screwed now, same story with invulns.

Shorts duration damage reduction will not defeat a thief, it will just make them reset a fight if the thief is not dumb. Retal similarly will not do much vs a thief unless you have alot of power, and even then thieves are capable of killing you in under 3 seconds flat even as a much more survivable build. Retal doesn’t work vs these builds, they kill too fast.