DeceiverX, I feel like you are trolling people here…
How can Backstab deal less damage than AA chain, if Backstab and Lotus Strike have same 1/4 cast time? Actually Lotus Strike also have long pre-cast and aftercast delay and damage wise Backstab + 2 AAs > 2 AAs + Lotus Strike, while using same amount of time.
As for SS + AAs – it is a good option for mid-combat, but never for openning strike. Yes, there are different situations on sPvP or WvW, but most of the time as thief with D/P you want to enter stealth, stack Lead, use Basilisk Venom and Backstab enemy with Steal from distance. And then depending on situation you keep AA or disengage and reengage with SS + AAs.
Also Shadow Shot + Backstab is still there and it is viable, when your Steal is on cd.
He’s talking about the aftercast on backstab. Shadow Shot into auto attack is in general better because you’ll land 3-4 attacks from shadow shot and the first Duel Strike and Wild Strike, you also have the added benefit of getting through more blinds and blocks with more hits.
Backstab isn’t the go to best thing to use. It’s situationally better and Shadow Shot into auto attack chain is situationally better.
That Mesmer build is simple to deal with. You just need to understand the counterplay.
1st map awareness is important, they can’t perma stealth. If they snuck up on you without you noticing that’s them outplaying you. Keep the mesmer targeted, if they stealth your target will drop and you’ll know they stealthed.
While they are stealthed you give up space to deny them value. As long as you are moving away, you’ll have more time to react to mirror blade too, because it has travel distance.
In case you don’t have stability or blocks available keep your fingers ready to stun break and dodge. Even a thief can react with a break and dodge and still survive with how squishy they are, again so long as you’re creating space so that mirror blade takes more time to travel.
Finally after you survive the initial stealth burst, heal up, and start fighting them as you would any other power mesmer. They won’t have the same kind of disengage, because they are probably running GS/S+T and mantra.
It’s a strong engage for sure, but dealing with it is pretty simple. Create space and react to the mirror blade projectile from stealth. Also, once they use their stealth mirror blade becomes incredibly easy to react to because of the obvious animation.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
DoT’s are fine when it’s well balanced like it is on Necromancer.
I don’t like low risk high reward philosophy that was introduced when conditions were changed from duration stacking to intensity stacking.
Condi got so strong that they had to buff my thief damage just to try and compete, which is silly, because power builds coordinating spikes was already good at launch.
I much preferred when condi was supplemental damage and you only had 1 condi build per team, because you couldn’t stack it.
Combat was much more engaging when you’d have to keep an on when Mesmers and Thieve’s would go into stealth then start giving up positioning as a squishy class and let your bunker Guardian hold point.
It was a good time when there were more well defined roles. Now too many things can do too much. Depending on what the tuning is, It’s either everything is a “brawler” archetype and doesn’t die, or everything is a “brawler” archetype and dies too fast. Then you have thief and mesmer as their mobility role of either speed or portal.
I’d be nice to get back to a place where we have frontline, midline, and backline again. For too long it’s just been midline and backline, because there’s no proper tradeoff of soaking damage for dealing less of it.
why did you even bother replying to Phineas Poe’s post? you’ve already said everything you said here in the post he only quoted part of. i don’t think saying the same thing twice is going to be impactful, i mean he thinks anet treat pvp like MLB. he’s living in an alternate reality.
I made an association, not a comparison—in a response to a question you made in your post that I saw fit to answer. You asked: “why would a game company ban popular streamers who make them money?” and I responded in kind.
That’s it, really.
If you want my honest opinion: I do not think that ArenaNet treats PvP seriously and I have truthfully lost faith that ArenaNet has the effort level or talent to even recognize the glaring problems this game is suffering from. It’s just critically broken in so many areas, and PoF does nothing to address them. WvW is dying out because of the condi meta on top of garbage server balancing and they saw fit to add Scourge and Firebrand to the game while advertising zero changes coming with PoF. PvP is dying out because of the lack of new game modes and Ben asserts it’s too much for them to balance even a 2v2 TDM game mode or give it its own queue.
The only area of the game that’s truthfully thriving right now is raids—content that really goes against a lot of what Guild Wars 2 originally sold itself as, which has subsequently resulted in a major shrinkage in friends list online activity following the launch of Heart of Thorns, even after the Path of Fire announcement.
You don’t have to talk down to me. I’ve been playing this game for five years and have thousands of hours invested in it. I’ve spent those years quite productively and had a great time playing it, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the ArenaNet that launched this game in 2012 is not the same ArenaNet that exists in 2017 and does not remotely exude the design philosophy or vision that got me to buy this game all those years ago. Yes, it still has horizontally flat PvP and WvW and there’s still some semblance of a living world on the PvE side of things, but at the end of the day it’s all incredibly surface-level content and ArenaNet has done very little to expand the game in any of these areas over the years, instead distracting the player base with pet projects and dead-ends.
If ArenaNet cared about curating PvP or maintaining any remote sense of its integrity they’d much more deliberately go after AFKers and match manipulators than they’ve exhibited in the past, which have done so much damage to the game mode and many players’ enjoyment of it.
Additionally, what Chaith is really failing to piece together in the collective outrage isn’t so much the fact that Chris accurately restated ArenaNet’s position on the matter but that such a position is being held in the first place. His comments from Reddit, verbatim:
> “If they break the rules again, they will be punished more severely. Is there a blacklist, yes. Are they on it, not yet.”
The comment appeared hallucinatory to me. They’re guilty of match manipulation and account sharing in ranked PvP, which they were subsequently dishonored for, and then circumvented that dishonoring by selling monthly wins playing on other peoples’ accounts—none of whom were banned from the game for this.
The Abjured literally ran an RMT/paid-service in Guild Wars 2 last month and Chris argues that while a blacklist exists, they are not on it “yet.” Zilent and Co., PvE players with accounts with thousands upon thousands of gold, are going to continue playing on their main accounts with no real punishment outside of not being able to queue into a game mode they never really played in the first place—or can simply play on an alt account.
I mean, seriously? What is it going to take for ArenaNet to sit up in their chair and even just act like they give a kitten? Because if any of you developers are reading this god awful thread, I just want you to understand that the only message being received right now is that it’s in my best interest to spend my time and money elsewhere, perhaps with a developer that actually values my investments.
Frankly, I just find it insulting that ArenaNet values the concerns and interests of other players so low that the actions of The Abjured appear passable to them; that having them win the August monthly on alternate accounts—after having been previously dishonored for their actions—is of no consequence to them. Or, to put it in Chris’ own words: the audacity of having “community opinion dictating player punishment” despite the completely legitimate criticism that Zilent and Co. cheated to obtain a title and promptly received a slap on the wrist for it.
It disappoints me to no end that the player base seems far more invested in this game than its developers are, and Guild Wars 2 years from now will likely be looked back on just like ArcheAge as the game that could’ve been if more talented, less short-sighted people were at the helm.
If nothing else, take under consideration the fact that the only post on the frontpage of the subreddit related to PvP defaces its significance beyond the reward scheme: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6wivt2/pvp_summed_up/
With the top comment reading: “If not for time gated rewards, this mode would be deserted.”
This guy is making a mountain out of a mound. This is non of anyone’s business anymore. This became old news once it was proven that you violate ToS you get punished, potentially blacklisted without the opportunity to play ever again. Move on instead of QQ’ing about something that isn’t affecting you. Don’t be mad ANet isn’t a tyrant company, be glad they show mercy and give people an extra chance. If you want crucifixion enjoy the many instances over history.
This is my only post for this thread. Peace homies.
You can already turn off map chat and say chat if you want, then you never have to know if people are saying anything.
Unravel as a concept feels really important for fluid game play on weaver. I don’t like the idea of it taking a utility slot and being a DoT effect.
I feel like it should be implemented as an f5 triggerable for only w/e your primary attunement is.
The DoT effect is really the main problem imo, and it feels like it was forced to make it fit the role of stance when that isn’t what would feel good to play.
Being able to trigger f5 to fully attune whenever you want and not have to wait or risk attunement swapping with the DoT effect would feel so much better imo.
I don’t know what kind of balance updates would have to be done to accomodate this properly, like if there’d have to be 3+ charges and charge cooldown changes to make some of the intended behaviors work on unravel. The stun break would likely need to be removed if it were an f5.
The main issue I’m trying to solve is the clunkiness of the mechanic. It’s clearly an intended feature, so I think unraveling should be implemented in a way that feels fluid. Id even be content without designing a replacement stance if it meant the core gameplay of Weaver feels better.
I would love for ANet to actually comment on this one time. I’ve never seen them bring up numbers or their stance on stacking builds that have no point presence.
This has been an before seasons existed. It will never pass
For 1 season just try implementing no thief stacking, please.
You are allowing for really awkward situations when both players can’t multi-class
1v1 thief is neigh unkillable, because of mobility. This is fine. They don’t bully bruisers off a capture point 1v1 assuming there isn’t a noticeable difference in skill.
The most common reason I’ve seen people have always complained about thief from day 1 is skill disparity combined with mobility. It lets thieves snowball when this exists.
Assuming there isn’t a large skill disparity between players the thief is tame, because they are weak in team fights and struggle to make plays when teams have solid rotations between points
essentially the current build design encourages experimentation, and adaptbility, but the design of items does the opposite, until legendary of course, which is an extremely large investment.
This is probably the best description of the current situation. While build diversity may not be perfect, it is still better than a few years ago. But the terrible system of gear and item management is a huge burden to this. You end up with huge costs, a stuffed inventory, and still lose a huge amount of time just by gear and trait swapping. That’s why I am still concerned with the approach of legendary gear as these items bring more qol then all other tiers (and even here I have doubts, that they are currently more convenient than switching between two sets of armors). But overall the people who benefit of it seems way too small to me to justify the work done on these features of legendary gear, instead of a change the underlying terrible system.
Casual players will never have the payoff from stat swapping on legendaries because of the amount of grind it takes to get that QoL.
I for example have plenty of hours into the game to have a legendary weapon or armor, but the way ANet says I need to spend my time to get those things doesn’t interest me (mostly because of the grind), so I don’t have the same QoL options that someone else has who has a different preference than I do. FeelsBadMan
as far as having to pay up for bis, that is not really an of course. While best in slot is ususally harder to get the relative difference is large. Also this game unlike others wants build diversity, it wasnt as much of an issue back when berserker was the only endgame gear of import, but now that they are balancing dif stat spreads, the high cost of investment is working against that.
essentially the current build design encourages experimentation, and adaptbility, but the design of items does the opposite, until legendary of course, which is an extremely large investment.
Exactly, I miss out on a lot of fun because I don’t get to experiment with how builds really feel to play unless I take a downscaled version.
I’m think it’s really a combined issue of build diversity being low combined with build craft being expensive because of how closely tied to the economy it is.
Really though I shouldn’t expect Guild Wars 2 to have the same amazing build diversity and high end content build viability that Guild Wars 1 had. ANet has chosen to try control what is viable in Guild Wars 2, whereas in Guild Wars 1 they gave a lot of tools/options and let the players be more in control if something could be viable.
Economy is the main design consideration when it comes to items in this game, not utility or game design.
This does seem to show in many of their decisions. It’s unfortunate to prefer economy over design improvement imo. But I think this is a core tenant shift that needs to happen, and is kind of what I’m asking for ANet to consider.
Hello Anet,
I have a simple to define issue I’d like to point out that is difficult for you to solve. The issue is quite simply that build optimization is tied way too heavily to the game’s economy.
To take you back to Guild Wars 1, you should recall that the game had loads of build craft that you could do. This was not tied heavily at all the game’s economy. Players mainly experienced build craft through exploring the game and experiencing content.
The beauty of this was the enjoyable cycle that it created. When players wanted to experience the game in a new way, by playing a new build, they would go do replay or do new content they haven’t done before in order to unlock the parts of their build they didn’t have. When a build got stale they would repeat the process. It was a cycle that promoted new experiences.
In Guild Wars 2, the problem of tying build craft so heavily to the economy is that obtaining new builds and optimizing them becomes about repetition/grind. You are incentivized to find the most efficient money farms available to you and repeat that.
This combined with the massive reduction in build craft available in Guild Wars 2 and the amount of grind for optimizing builds due to that low supply of available builds has been a real struggle for me. At this point I can only play PvE for story (and on alts), because I feel like I’m wasting my time if I try to do more in the game.
Obviously you have a long established economy that boils down to everything is tied to build optimization or cosmetics, so easing the pain of making build craft more readily available is probably a challenge that can’t be overcome anytime soon.
Ultimately I’m just hoping that you make a core tenant of your future development to be fostering a cycle of experiencing the game in new ways, even when it’s replaying prior experiences. I feel like Guild Wars 1 did this very well and Guild Wars 2 should be able to reach a similar mark, since it’s still you as the developer.
i understand your point, and you are right, but it will never happen here, this games design is heavily driven by the vision of how they want the economy to be, and they have basically made it clear that they want an extremely high level of economic investment for you to access build diversity.
this is why legendaries are the most expensive items, and new stat distibutions need more resources than old ones.
It’s definitely not a thing that can happen quickly. It will take a change to a core tenant of development. And I’m hoping they start to analyze how to make content replayable not for getting currency, but instead for getting pieces of new builds people can play to experience the game differently. Maybe the core problem I have is more along the lines of build diversity being so limited, but I also think build craft as it currently exists needs to be shifted.
Hello Anet,
I have a simple to define issue I’d like to point out that is difficult for you to solve. The issue is quite simply that build optimization is tied way too heavily to the game’s economy.
To take you back to Guild Wars 1, you should recall that the game had loads of build craft that you could do. This was not tied heavily at all the game’s economy. Players mainly experienced build craft through exploring the game and experiencing content.
The beauty of this was the enjoyable cycle that it created. When players wanted to experience the game in a new way, by playing a new build, they would go do replay or do new content they haven’t done before in order to unlock the parts of their build they didn’t have. When a build got stale they would repeat the process. It was a cycle that promoted new experiences.
In Guild Wars 2, the problem of tying build craft so heavily to the economy is that obtaining new builds and optimizing them becomes about repetition/grind. You are incentivized to find the most efficient money farms available to you and repeat that.
This combined with the massive reduction in build craft available in Guild Wars 2 and the amount of grind for optimizing builds due to that low supply of available builds has been a real struggle for me. At this point I can only play PvE for story (and on alts), because I feel like I’m wasting my time if I try to do more in the game.
Obviously you have a long established economy that boils down to everything is tied to build optimization or cosmetics, so easing the pain of making build craft more readily available is probably a challenge that can’t be overcome anytime soon.
Ultimately I’m just hoping that you make a core tenant of your future development to be fostering a cycle of experiencing the game in new ways, even when it’s replaying prior experiences. I feel like Guild Wars 1 did this very well and Guild Wars 2 should be able to reach a similar mark, since it’s still you as the developer.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Is it a big deal to have a configurable attach point?
I recall seeing a suggestion to allow for superspeed on sigil of agility. I agree that maybe 1-1.5 seconds of superspeed is a good idea. It offers a new avenue for creating separation from melee beyond just dodges.
The condi duration seems rather high. It effectively increases damage by 25% assuming full duration conditions. This becomes very strong for multi stack low duration moves.
On the other hand power sigil damage seems to be significantly less than the condi potential. Is the goal to have these be even?
How does the counterplay for sigil of Revelation work? Is it a delayed reveal or instant cast? What does the 1/4 second mean? Is there supposed to be a noticeable tell so people can dodge it?
Doesnt this sigil counterplay shadow refuge by itself? Is 1 sigil on an 18s cd to counterplay 1 utility skill on a 60s cd a proper distribution of value?
If the cast is instant is does multiple reveals on a team become so strong vs builds that depend on not being able to targeted as their defense that they are effectively hard countered in the fights? Meaning by existing on teams professions can be hard countered by simply adjusting sigils within a team, because by eliminating a professions defense you can easily force 4v5s by either getting a kill or forcing out stealth heavy character out of a fight.
The risky of stealth builds being hard countered by a combination of 2 people with a sigil and a herald seems pretty high for team comps with these proposed changes.
So I understand that there are very few sigils being used. But, I think this is a drastic change. It’s impacts on what Professions will be used in the meta will be substantial.
It’s quite literally, removing the current sigil meta throwing in something new and saying figure it out. Do we understand how the DPS redux will impact power builds? How will condi builds be impacted.
If you have a stealth class, 3 players from a team can take a 9 second cool down reveal, eliminating the defense of an entire build by just swapping weapons. That’s 3 reveals every 3 seconds potentially with just 3 characters.
Currently my opinion of this approach is that it’s rushed and not thought through enough.
I think if you are looking to make sigil changes the approach you should take is to start nerfing the overused ones, get rid of the sigils you think aren’t useful, and introduce new sigils you think would be good.
No smoke without fire. 3 pages now. This is an issue that needs looking at.
Lol, people are pointing out obvious flaws in the “nerf this” argument and the “nerf this” side continues pressing.
Clearly this does need looked at… So the thread can be closed for spreading misinformation. But I’ll enjoy the hilarity of the illogical arguments until then.
P.S. apharma is the only one presenting historical evidence with his points. Which I do find validity to. I’m of the opinion PI isn’t busted though simply because you are making a trade of Shadow shot for Headshot and both do the same thing , just one for skills and the other for attacks. And Headshot deals less damage.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Wow, what happened? The last change to thief I saw before I stopped playing was the set of changes with the auto attack buffs. Even after that though thieves, even the D/P Daredevil build, was considered too weak to be in the meta.
This was what… like a year ago. Since then the only changes to thief I’ve seen have been the nerf to stealth attacks. So now thieves are suddenly OP?
I doubt that. Has PvP been getting more players? And we have more people that need initiated?
Thief was undesirable due to the insane strength of revenants back then and how much more defensive everyone was. A lot of defensive amulets have been removed and defensive traits reduced in strength or given longer cool downs over the last year.
The nearest thing you get to a bunker is with paladins which adds 560 vitality and toughness, second to that is menders with 560 vitality but 1050 healing both are not that tough in actual stats. Most builds now are running very defensive in traits though, with most picking at least 2 defensive lines, 3 in some cases and even then they can be focused down pretty fast.
Everything has always been able to be focused down fast lol XD.
The problem with thief has always been in team fights as their only contribution is interrupts and damage and they get pressured out of doing those things because of not being able to take incidental cleave and AoE. This combined with AoE team heals negate thieves contribution to fights, and since I’ve been back I see these things havent changed.
I am mostly just amused that people are upset about less mathematical value out of headshot PIs than Shadow Shot, especially on autoattacks.
You asked what changed, so I told you. A lot of defences on other classes have been reduced, if you don’t believe me then read through the nearly 1 year of balance patches and see for yourself.
Couple this with reduced stats on toughness and vitality with the removal of a large number of amulets and classes are much easier to burst down or focus than before. Engineer nearly always had an elixir S for when focused now not so much, they had 1/4s cast on healing turret but now it’s longer and easier to interrupt and heal gyro while instant is less of a heal and no condi removal. Some skills reduced damage by 50% and are now 33%, cool downs on some blocks have gone up, rev has to dodge an attack to get stab so now is very susceptable to thief.
Put simply a lot of the big picks for the last few esl tournaments have been nerfed in survivability which has allowed thief back into the role it used to have.
Yes I’m fully aware of how much shadowshot does and have said before on the forums how strong it is.
Great! So so that means thieves have been in the winning team comps for pro team champions then?
Wow, what happened? The last change to thief I saw before I stopped playing was the set of changes with the auto attack buffs. Even after that though thieves, even the D/P Daredevil build, was considered too weak to be in the meta.
This was what… like a year ago. Since then the only changes to thief I’ve seen have been the nerf to stealth attacks. So now thieves are suddenly OP?
I doubt that. Has PvP been getting more players? And we have more people that need initiated?
Thief was undesirable due to the insane strength of revenants back then and how much more defensive everyone was. A lot of defensive amulets have been removed and defensive traits reduced in strength or given longer cool downs over the last year.
The nearest thing you get to a bunker is with paladins which adds 560 vitality and toughness, second to that is menders with 560 vitality but 1050 healing both are not that tough in actual stats. Most builds now are running very defensive in traits though, with most picking at least 2 defensive lines, 3 in some cases and even then they can be focused down pretty fast.
Everything has always been able to be focused down fast lol XD.
The problem with thief has always been in team fights as their only contribution is interrupts and damage and they get pressured out of doing those things because of not being able to take incidental cleave and AoE. This combined with AoE team heals negate thieves contribution to fights, and since I’ve been back I see these things havent changed.
I am mostly just amused that people are upset about less mathematical value out of headshot PIs than Shadow Shot, especially on autoattacks.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
The funnier thing is that Shadow shot is literally the same thing as a Headshot with pulmonary impact vs auto attacks (auto attack interrupts being a thing people are specifically pointing out) except Shadow shot deals more damage and is easier to land and puts you in position to deal more damage.
But nope, PI Headshots make thief OP. Lol.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
I’m in disbelief that people actually think thief is OP let alone that spending 4 initiative dealing 2-3k delayed damage off an interrupt (depending on build) is what makes the class OP.
I can’t find the words to describe the absurdity, especially since the only change to D/P thief since it was considered too weak for meta was a nerf to stealth attacks.
I guess I should be happy we have a bunch of new players who don’t understand how to play yet.
Wow, what happened? The last change to thief I saw before I stopped playing was the set of changes with the auto attack buffs. Even after that though thieves, even the D/P Daredevil build, was considered too weak to be in the meta.
This was what… like a year ago. Since then the only changes to thief I’ve seen have been the nerf to stealth attacks. So now thieves are suddenly OP?
I doubt that. Has PvP been getting more players? And we have more people that need initiated?
I’m back from a long break and am playing D/P on thief, because it’s what I’ve played since S/D was nerfed forever ago.
Are all the other weapon sets still bad against other profession meta builds in top level competitive play? Has anything else been buffed so there’s more than 1 weapon setup?
I noticed that Sword 2 immobilize is slightly longer. Tried out S/P a bit, and it’s okay, but still suffers from the same problems it always has, which is less survivability than D/P and less burst damage than D/P. Maybe there’s a more CC oriented Sword build??? Noticed Quickness lets you perma immob someone for as long as you have iniative.
Or are we in the same situation we always were since HoT’s came out, which is D/P is still the only competitive theif build and if it weren’t for that then thief wouldn’t be used on teams?
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
For clarity, look at my match history
Stop putting multiple theives on the same team together, just stop… serioulsy, the trolling is old, look at my match history… just knock it off, I mean it’s been done, it should be over with. I come back from basically a year hiatus and this is still happening? Put one on the other team, hell put me on the other team, I don’t care, it’s dumb having 2 thieves on the same team, always dumb, so stop it.
You don’t have to run shortbow. Take some combination of Dash with any of Sword Mainhand or Staff, Infiltrator’s Signet, or Shadowstep. You’ll be mobile enough.
I only run shortbow, as the other weapon, because in terms of usefulness there’s only two options Staff or Shortbow and Shortbow is more useful vs downstate because of the DoT poison field and you don’t have a lower gank risk than staff since you’re ranged.
The other reason to not run Staff with Dagger/Sword/Pistol mainhand, is that you have 1 pool of resources as a thief, so it makes since to pick the option that covers what you can’t do instead of something that already does what you can do.
It’s not shortbow 5 that’s the exclusive reason for running shortbow, it’s the utility of the shortbow kit as a whole covers options the other sets don’t cover.
I haven’t figured out how to deal with warrior/rev defenses yet. Is the counterplay just to pretent like they aren’t in the fight and position yourself away from them to avoid their high dps?
They have lots of invulns, blocks, and of course dodges, but they still have point presence while it’s all going on. So I’m not quite sure what to do vs this.
Account sharing comes with certain risks, which is why we have a rule against it. Normally we don’t action against it (unless one of the parties was doing bad things). Doing it during a tournament is a bad idea.
I’ll make something very clear. When you share your account, we know. You can try to hide it, but we know, and we will be watching.
I know you think you know, but really you need to check to see if people change the account’s keybinds, because there’s people like me who travel and have installed the gw2 client on machines besides my own personal one’s. So you can’t just rely on changes in location informaiton, or mac addresses.
But people don’t have to change the keybinds on the GW2 account you can get a 3rd party keybind mapper to be an invisible bridge to make keybinds what you want them, which unless the GW2 client is able to tap into Mac, Linux, and Windows process mangement can’t be detected.
In this particular case though, I’m sure it was strange that the same IP address was being used for two accounts that normally use different IP addresses. Frostball should have called his ISP and had them give him a new IP lease or just gone to some other internet conneciton. Do your research next time kids.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
tl;dr – I’m writing this out of fear of the GW2 competitive scene being over taken by better scenes. There’s a market for players and viewership, and GW2 has lost me to better experiences (in my opinion), and I would like to want to be more invested as I really appreciate this game. I don’t know what needs to change, but I point out what interest me from other games below.
I fairly recently have transitioned out of playing Guild Wars 2 with any regularity, and the same goes for watching it. So I thought I’d share some thoughts from one who played the game for a while on what pulled me away.
In short it can be summarized into viewership quality and scene potential being too low. Playing however is super fun. That said, in watching other games such as DoTA2, HoTS, SSB4, SSB Melee, SV5, and most recently Pokken I found the viewership experience to be much better.
I watched last year’s International, and I have to say DoTA suffers from build and mechanics complexity in the same way GW2 does. But it’s much easier to view at a macro level than GW2, I wouldn’t have watched the DoTA2 International if it weren’t for the size of the scene.
I watch Heroes of the Storm fairly frequently, and I am much more impressed with HoTS than DoTA2 or GW2 from a viewer perspective. I really like how important positioning is and how you can body block to make plays. The MOBA genre gets more and more interesting as time goes on in a match, whereas GW2 in comparison is pretty much the same throughout, which can make some matches very stale. HoTS has really well done comeback mechanics, that make matches interesting through to the end.
Regarding the 4 fighting games, viewership is very simple. For a sports comparison, it’s like watching wrestling or a boxing match. Additionally in the Smash Bros. series there’s a doubles competitive format, which is very interesting. The thing I really enjoy most about the fighting games is seeing reads happen that result in really flashy looking combo’s or finishes. The mind games you see happening are very entertaining. And the fighting game scene is carried by the community, especially the Smash Bros. games, there’s some really interesting history there.
I’ve been to a few Smash Bros tournments to compete and watch, and it’s super intimidating at first, but if you can open yourself up a little bit socially, it’s a really great experience. Fighting games are just really easy to view, and for me very interesting, and entertaining, then the fact that the scene not only has so much potential, but realizes that potential is amazing. During the Genesis 3 tournament Super Smash Bros Melee had 200,000+ viewers on Twitch for a tournament that was entirely community driven. That game came out in 2001, that’s unreal.
In summary, as fun as GW2 is to play, I don’t have as much fun watching it as other games, and as a result of seeing other games that were more entertaining to watch or have more scene potential, I’ve shifted my playing time to those games. So if anyone from the ANet competitive team reads this, I would hope you can address some of the high level things to improve the viewing experience. Removing that bunker meta was a really good move, but honestly that was a big part of driving me away, but I hope the hurt from that meta doesn’t have too much of a lasting effect. I believe this game can be more fun and bigger, and that ANet can make it happen. I’ll be watching from the shadows, as I happen to be a thief.
#BelieveInAnet
Hey Aeroxe, it’s a good topic. I don’t think necromancers need to be addressed from a thief perspective. I’d be more inclined to focus on Revenant, as my opinion is they are what push thieves out of competitive teams. But I don’t think it’s just thieves Revenant impacts, I think it’s also Mesmers and potentially other roamers that lack sustain.
Revenant’s catch-up mobility is definitely the most valuable in the game. It’s the the least expensive because of the option to reset your resource pool. When roaming from point to point it’s effectively available more than twice as often as thief mobility, because of a combination of distance and the resource pool reset. Basically thieves have to be careful when engaging on a point they are traveling too unless they used shadow step to get there, because you have the escape option; whereas Revenants, phase traversal twice and legend swap if they want their resources back.
Revenant’s also push Mesmers out of the meta, which would be nice for thieves if shatter mesmer was viable, because revenants counter portal plays. Portal is the major value of Mesmers. And when you as a Mesmer can portal 1, 2, 3 or 4 players onto a point with a revenant and the revenant can chain evades, blocks + with stability because dodge trait, and invulns to the point that enough time passes for back up to arrive and the Revenant still doesn’t die, you’ve effectively given up map control for no benefit. Seriously though revenant, invuln chains need to die. The stability on dodge makes it so you can’t even counter with unblockable CC unless you have multiple of them.
I don’t think there’s much more to it than that honestly. If you fix how broken Revenant is, you bring Thief and Mesmer back into viability. If Thief and Mesmer are viable, there’s the potential Dragon Hunter’s counter pick option to use. I don’t know what fixing Revenant would do for warrior, if anything.
tl;dr
Focus on fixing how broken Revenant is with it’s +1 mobility and it’s invuln chains.
You mean like, guardian wards? Probably undodgeable because 40+ second cooldown skills vs 10 second recharge dodge.
Also if you’re looking for a defensive ability to counter everything, that’s invuln.
At the moment, d/p ultilize the leap finisher from Heartseeker through Black powder to stack stealth. Through testing, Quad-Leaping through Black powder using Heartseeker results in a total net loss of only -2 initiative after stealth ends (we look at the initiative loss after being visible again because for all testing purposes you’re basically invuln in stealth; ofc that’s not literally true). At this rate, it is possible to maintain perma-stealth especially when combined with Bound. Stealth is okay but. Perma-stealth is not! It’s not fun for the other person. So we increase the intiative cost of Heartseeker to raise the cost of maintaining stealth.
Stand in their black powder after they go for the first stack and they’ll either reveal themselves, or get two stacks of stealth at most. Taking a blind for 2 seconds is worth the trade, since they lose so much in resources and time, you’ll often get blinded anyways by their allies when they try to peel for the thief.
Otherwise if you don’t want to take heartseeker/bound damage, CC their black powder and cleave it.
Also if you notice thieves are wasting their resources stealthing for a long time, immediately focus one of their team members, you’ll either have 12+ seconds free while they stealth or they’ll engage without their resource pool having replenished leaving them with half or less initiative. Either way it’s a win win for you.
Thieves sitting in stealth is one of the most useless things they can do in PvP, it only ever adds value if it results in a gank burst, which along with mesmer is one of their main things in combat as their team fighting is otherwise bad (except for staff theif while they have initiative).
Edit
Also raising the initiative cost of heartseeker ignores base thief and is only attempting to balance around Daredevil’s picking the Bound options, this pidgeon holes thieve’s into relying more on bound to survive instead of being able to pick other options.
Edit2
Raising the initiative cost also pidgeon holes them more into the Trickery line, which I would love to see be less necessary.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Blind, CC, damage immunity options, weakeness, etc
You’ll need to provide the weaponsets at least for us to have enough context to help you understand what works in an encounter.
Really quick point to throw out in regard to this thread. The only context I see considered in here is thief.
Thief has two pvp viable sets in my opinion. Staff and D/P. I’m not sure why people are isolating their thought process to nerfing D/P, because of it being a good thief set, when they aren’t considering the greater game as a whole, and the other professions and builds.
If you want thief to have a third viable set, then you pick one and buff it. You don’t risk taking a viable set out of viability by having your focus being on nerfing the viable set. Doing that leaves you with one viable set worst case.
In the current situation today, basic risk management in keeping a number of viable weapon sets obviously points to buffing offhand dagger over nerfing D/P and/or Staff. Those two sets are good, they work, they’re effective and that effectiveness changes in different situations, which is good.
The complaints of thief being at its core ineffectively broken and needing addressed, I disagree with. It comes across as rhetoric and insincere, as thief does fulfill the roles of damage and mobility well.
The complaints about buffing offhand dagger resulting in power creep are also unjustified. Buffing offhand dagger, doesn’t make D/P or Staff better. You aren’t raising the effectiveness of those builds. The only risk of power creep lies in X/D builds, which would only be a thing if an X/D weapon set became significantly better than D/P and Staff, which has nothing to do with the actual power of those two sets.
If people keep having this bubble they’re setting their mind in, and these people had the power to implement the changes they’re describing via straight nerfing a set, the result is that you only have 1 effective set anymore, and the set you wanted to be good still isn’t good anyways. Then super worse case they nerf the other good set, and then you have Thief compared to other professions, and there’s no reason to thief anymore, you should take a Revenant, because other professions have good weapon sets.
tl;dr
People aren’t thinking within the full context of the game
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Speed and combo damage is a playstyle I enjoy in games, thief suits my preferences best.
Thank you for balance updates, there are people who won’t like WHAT they are, but I think most people will appreciate THAT they are updates.
Gives people new puzzles to solve when you update balance.
The problem is offhand dagger is weak, not that D/P is too strong.
I would just add effects to offhand dagger, because all 3 combinations with offhand dagger are fairly lack luster.
Offhand dagger needs a gimmick. What that gimmick is doesn’t matter as long as it’s good. The problem is, the skills are currently bad. Plenty of people have suggested things in the past.. I’ve suggested giving a “teleport to behind” effect as a skill flip over to dancing dagger, but plenty of other things can be done instead or in addition.
This is something that’s been pointed out before, but one of the biggest issues preventing professions from using certain amulets is health pools.
Specifically the pools are:
Further complicating things are base armor, but that’s a minimal impact in comparison of more like 10-20% between ranges.
Stat’s are incredible difficult to balance because of the systems around them. Amulet’s are what was decided upon in PvP, so I’m just going to stick with that’s what the system is instead of what it could be. We have major changes around amulet’s incoming.
It’d be nice if we could say, this is the condi crit amulet, this is the condi power amulet, this is the healing bunker amulet, this is the healing condi amulet, this is the power glass cannon amulet, but honestly there’s multiple of these in some cases and none in others.
And in my opinion a major reason for that, is there’s a problem that has to be dealt with in the form of Health pools.
Health pools are so, drastically different baseline that it creates a conundrum. Honestly looking at all of the stats between professions (probably including power damage output from skills overtime even, condi is definitely varying), and nothing comes close to being as much of a baseline outlier as health pools. There’s a 60% disparity in the amount of life from low to high, that’s incredible.
It’s never been addressed, but it’s been highlighted, and in my opinion it would save a lot of balance heartache if the pools weren’t so drastically different.
Yes, you can also make the initiative options not options, but baseline. This reduces the risk of initiative management stacking between traitlines.
What I see from game balance is good ideas being tested in the wrong place.
ANet, if you are going watch production metrics to determine if your changes are going the way you expect them, then you should really consider gathering those metrics in a public test realm/server.
I get it, you’re not set up for that yet, and it’ll take effort/time to do this and come up with a proper process. That said, if your pro-league is going to be more than just a marketing tool, and a legit attempt at professional gaming, you can’t have balance flubs like the bunker meta that came out of HoT, and you can’t have flubs with your quarterly major balance patches either. If you want your pro pvp marketing effort to be taken well that is.
It’s been suggested many time before in these forums, on reddit, probably by people talking to you guys in person too. But I think the evidence has mounted up enough that you guys need a PTR for your balance changes.
Is it going to solve everything? No way, and players will need to understand that too. Will it give you a much greater opportunity to catch problematic outliers, you bet it will.
The main reason I bring up these points, is because you as a company are clearly demonstrating, that you have cool ideas you want to implement, but your current process leaves everyone including yourselves very unsure of whether changes are good for PvP or not. I think employees and managers alike within the company would agree with what I have put in the title (“Beta in Production”), if you objectivley step back and look at how the company as a whole has been handling combat balance.
Edit
Also, community, please leave a comment, even if you have nothing to add, if you support this to keep this visible.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
If you want trickery to not be mandatory you need to give better initiative options to other trait lines
Honestly with the changes to rezzing I’m pretty sure the old shadow arts meta build is going to be brought back into the limelight and there’s going to be a lot of play between thief rez and rev/engi’s revealing the rez’s.
Shadow Arts the way it is will be strong after the upcoming changes.
Foefire is the fastest map in my experience, I like when things are fast pace, I pick foefire a lot because it’s quick.
For some context, I’ve been away from the game for a bit primarily because the meta is just so uninteresting.
I figure maybe something has happened and people have been able to adjust to the meta and jump on for 3 games.
But no, nothing has changed, which I thought was probably the case, but wanted to try to play some anyways.
I’m assuming thief and warrior are still clear bottom tier in the current meta based on what I experienced.
Hi Anet,
I need you to do one of two things. Factor team composition into your matchmaking or balance your game.
That is all.
So how do you want them to factor that in?
If they see a mesmer, should it be assumed that it’s bunker, or chrono shatter? Or maybe even condi?
If they see a thief, should they make the win ratio 0%? Even if it’s Caed?
I can go on, but there’s no chance of that happening unless they kill build variety entirely.
Or make a system where someone could say “I’m doing X”. But… I’ve played the games that had that, and they sucked just as much, if not more.
I don’t really care how they factor it in. I don’t like that I can count the number of mes/ele/rev on each team and then am able to guess which team will win most of the time.
Edit
Also in what world is it okay to pit 3 condi reapers against 2 eles?
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
When you load into a game, you can swap classes. That’s more then most games offer IMO.
If I wasn’t a joke on every class but one I’d swap. Seriously, you’d want a chimp playing instead of me when I’m on an alt class.
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