Showing Posts For Thighum.7295:
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I think the shortbow needs the most help damagewise, the AA damage is painfully low.
I can hit for barely 2k while a thief can hit constant for over 4k.
Some reasons why this is stupid:
1. We’re supposed to be the archer class, the thief isn’t. So in my opinion, we should deal more damage with the AA than the thief is doing.
2. The main damagesource of the ranger shortbow is the AA, while the thief shortbow is meant to hit harder with his skills other than his AA.
Lets stop with the exaggeration here. It isn’t like thieves have an amazing ranged options. They only have 900 ranged options.
As for the thief shortbow, with an almost full ascended zerker build, its auto attack hits for 1.5-1.9k when it crits. Sure cluster bomb may hit for 4k, but it is extremely slow, and unlikely to hit mobile opponents who are awake unless used as point blank range, at which a sword or a dagger is much more efficient.
This feeling that shortbow thieves have a better ranged option than rangers seems random, especially since rangers have a 1500 range option, 600 more range than a thief can attack from.
If you have to complain/compare about another ranged weapon on a different class, at least point at warriors with their longbows and rifles. Both are more useful in a fight than a thief’s shortbow.
Permastowing Pets
This suggestion goes in line with my previous suggestions, which I will sum up shortly:
- Shift the damagemodel from Ranger: 70%, Pet: 30% to Ranger: 100%, Pet: Additional damage (10%)
I disagree here. 100% + 10% = 110% not 100%. We shouldn’t be asking to be balanced around doing 110% of what other classes do, but 100%; anything more is just asking to be op.
Perma-stow / Aspects / A utility only pet that gives the damage back to the ranger when equipped all seem like reasonable suggestions I have heard that give 100% of the damage back to the ranger.
Personally, I don’t really care for stealth either but due to the way Anet built the class it feels very necessary. We have EVERYTHING tied into it.
Increased damage: check
Healing: check
Condi Removal: check
Blind Spamming: check
Benefits of stealth such as easy escapes or player/damage avoidance: check
Its set up in a way that you basically want to be in stealth as much as possible due to all the benefits that are tied to it, and everything currently is balanced around it.
I feel that having so much tied to it actually limits thief diversity. If they would unlink the healing, blinds, condi removal, and increased damage from stealth, and made stealth simply about mind games and escapes, I bet it would be “spammed” far less. Of course, that would require a massive rebalance, which I doubt will ever happen.
Sometimes I wish I could get my assassin from gw1 back where there was no steath; however I bet people would find something to complain about it too, as they did in gw1 (until it was crazy nerfed) and every other game that had a thief/rogue/assassin character.
Ok guys, just wanted to clarify a few things.
Permastow is not impossible. I never meant to give that impression, so I apologize if I did. However, as far as priorities go for the Ranger, it is not high on the list. Why? Because it would require an entire re-balance of Ranger, but if we re-balanced, then the players that do play with the pet would be OP. See the dilemma there?
Thank goodness. I am confused about something though, why would perma stow make pets op? I figured that something like a damage boost would only occur while the pet was stowed. I don’t think that the skills themselves would need to be changed, just a %stat boost that would give the approximate damage that the pet gave.
The reason why I latched onto the aspect idea was because it was an option that seemed we could maybe work around. Rather than having to rebalance the whole class, we’d just have to balance the aspects to be similar to what the pet does damage-wise. That seemed a little more viable.
I thought that aspects was basically the equivalent of perma-stowing with a stat boost, an F2 skill by family and glowing particles to show which aspect you were in. I don’t really understand how this is dramatically different from perma stowing with a damage boost while stowed.
Some more fleshed out thoughts behind Ranger Sub Classes.
I don’t believe that a subclass is the answer. I know that subclasses were brought up in the progression CDI but we don’t know if or when they would ever be implemented. I think if would make more sense to focus on fixing the ranger profession so it is like the others instead of adding more complexity to the system.
I’ve seen people mention several times that the pets damage should basically be moved to the ranger, and replaced with tons of support and crowd control.
I think this would be very nice. The pet would feel like it is contributing to the fight, but is no longer reducing the ranger’s damage when it isn’t useful, like in attacking/defending walls in WvW.
If this was done, pets would not need scaling stats. Also aspects wouldn’t be needed either. However I feel like there should be a trait that allows the ranger to shift some of his damage back to the pet if wanted.
I think this would keep the pet as a valuable part of the class no matter whether you wish to emphasize the archer or the beastmaster parts of the ranger.
However this would require a complete rebalancing of all weapon skills on the ranger, and redoing all the skills on pets. This would be a significant amount of work.
Instead, apply an aura to the pet that does the same thing spirits currently do. I like this, the less clutter the better.
More than any class in the game, Ranger requires a significant investment in traits before a large number of their utility skills are even work slotting. This would help a lot.
Pets need stat scaling. I agree
Pets should take less damage from AoE and one-shot mechanics. This would help pets in boss fights, and wvw zergs.
When the pet is stowed, the Ranger should gain “aspect of the <pet name>” effect which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet. I’m glad you mentioned this, though I think that a buff based on the pet family would be enough, no need to over-complicate things. This would greatly help in situations like wall attacking/defense in WvW.
Signets should always affect the Ranger and require a beastmastery trait to also affect the pet. This would be awesome.
New trait: Master: Cleansing Swap: When you swap pets, you lose 2 conditions (ICD of 10 seconds). Sounds nice.
Ranger weapon sets should be redesigned so that weapon selection synergizes with specific playstyles. I agree.
Longbow: Reward max range and synergize with pet. I disagree that synergizing with the pet should be a focus of the longbow. The focus of the longbow should be physical damage and CC. I did like the idea of having max range apply vuln instead of added damage, this is less punishing for not being able to maintain max range. I would also like to add that a knockdown instead of a knockback would be more appealing when partying with a ranger. It is extremely annoying to have a LB ranger knock your target away when you are meleeing them. Also I think some form of poison to help with suppressing your target’s healing would be nice.
Torch: Condition application What main hand would synergize with this offhand? Both Sword and Axe are power weapons, I think modifying one of them to be a condi main hand would be good along with this.
(Traps) simply do not make sense here, because they are largely condition based but skirmishing is the crit line. I agree, move them to the marksmanship line for condi duration.
Rangers should be given some trait options to improve poison in various ways (extended duration, improved healing suppression, higher damage values, bonuses against poisoned foes, etc.). If ranger has to stay without burst, then this is definitely needed.
VII. Spotter – Should be moved to Skirmishing as Grandmaster minor. YES!!!
X. Eagle Eye – Include shortbow. Provides 200 range and +5% damage on longbow and harpoon gun. (no range bonus for shortbow) This is confusing. If this wouldn’t give extra range to Shortbow when traited what would be the point, since +5% dmg wouldn’t mean much since SB was suggested to become a condi weapon. Also why the reduction form 300 to 200. This seems like a nerf not a buff.
(Skirmishing) should focus on weapon swapping, stuns, dazes and mobility in combat. I think that control effects would make more sense being the focus of marksmanship because of the condi duration stat, while this line make more sense for physical damage because of both the crit and crit damage stats which primarily aid physical damage. The focus on mobility would be nice. I’m not sure that I like the current focus on weapon swapping. People trying to do max damage get less out of weapon swap traits because they do not have the needed survivability to weapon swap multiple times throughout a fight.
Cats give condition builds high direct damage burst, while direct damage builds don’t get stronger with different pets. Hopefully stat scaling would solve this, and prevent condi bunker builds from becoming OP with some of the earlier pet changes.
I liked quite a bit of what was being discussed.
For better reference:
I run towards her. Steal in to avoid having to dodge the small circles. Dodge the big circle. Hit F. Randomly interrupted with no warning mid stomp. Any ideas?I found that steal puts you too close to the control room. The room behind Scarlet has an invisible shield that KB’s you through any buff at random times if you so much as sneeze near it. Stay the max distance in FRONT of Scarlet that still allows you to stomp. Don’t worry about any fancy tricks, just run up to her, dodge to the SIDE (if scarlet if facing north you want to dodge from west to east or east to west) when you see the choking animation on your character then immediately start stomping and don’t hit any buttons until it is complete.
That did it. I guess steal was putting me too close.
1. target her
2. use a dmg skill (any)
3. dodge the aoe
4. hit FDid it 1st try, no stability or anything.
I did exactly what you said and…random knockback mid stomp with 0 warning.
This achievement requires skill to understand the mechanics of her stomp interupt. You can get tips from Dulfy if you feel you’re stuck.
I followed dulfy’s guide and vid exactly, it didn’t work. I am getting a random knockback with 0 warning, unlike in the vid.
You can also use mist form on an Ele while doing the stomp when you see the orange circle. It’s pretty much easy mode rather than having to continuously watch that cutscene for each attempt to learn when to dodge.
I do not have an ele. Considering that my post made references to steal and stealth I thought it was obvious that I play a thief. And I am dodging the giant orange circle fine, that is not what is knocking me back.
For better reference:
I run towards her. Steal in to avoid having to dodge the small circles. Dodge the big circle. Hit F. Randomly interrupted with no warning mid stomp. Any ideas?
This achievement is next to impossible to do, maybe I lag to much or something but Ive tried to stomp her before her shield about 40 times now with no success.
I’ve tried stability (she still knocks you back)
I’ve tried quickness (she spams skills faster than you can do the stomp)
I’ve tried stealth (she still spams skills on you as if she knows where you are)
I’ve tried following the vid on dulfy (never seems to go my way even if I do something identical to the successful vid)
I’ve tried the using quickness and then stealing with the daze on steal trait (still no success)
The most annoying thing? Not all the failures or attempts, but having to watch the cutscene over and over and over again. The first time I saw it I thought cool. Now I see and think ug here it goes again. Please give me a skip scene button!
It seriously does need a rework. I agree that it does attempt to fill a role, but it is way too weak at filling that role.
D/D #3 needs: more evade time or less of an after cast. Currently it evades for 1/4 second, but the cast time is 1/2 second + 1/4 after cast. It is also hard to control…time to leap off of bridges, cliffs, or walls; thus is needs more control, really we should be able to aim it’s direction, instead of it auto jumping at a selected target, sending you off a cliff to a spawn point. Finally it needs to scale better with direct damage. When I see a group I should think “Time to unleash some death blossom on them” not “time to pick them off slowly one by one while backstabbing the entire pack to death.” Its current uselessness is rather depressing.
I’d say the first post is correct.
Both basically do the same damage. Look at heart seeker, and add the small damage from blinding powder shot to it. It basically matches the damage from CnD, and is way superior when your opponent is at lower hp levels. The difference being that the shot is ranged, and HS is a leap, so they are easier to hit an opponent with than CnD which is short range.
Now look at initiative. BP + HS = 6+3=9; CnD=6. However black powder’s field blinds, so you don’t need the blind on stealth trait for survivability, and can take the 2 initiative trait instead. Thus BP+HS=9-2=7 initiative. 7 is not that different from 6 initiative.
Add to this that it is far harder for someone to prevent a d/p from entering stealth than a d/d, both because it doesn’t require a target, and that the shot from black powder blinds your opponent, so they most likely will not be able to clear the blind and interrupt your HS in time. And so many good traits are tied to maintaining stealth like condi removal, and healing while in stealth.
I play d/d when I want to look good, or when I am fighting AI. I role d/p when I want to slaughter people in WvW.
Edit: 1 thing to add. The only thing that I find superior about d/d in WvW is that CnD works better in a zerg. This is because the BP+HS combo can be messed up by all of the field spam in WvW zergs, giving you some random thing you didn’t want instead of stealth at times.
(edited by Thighum.7295)
Trait Lines in general:
Please condense pet traits into the beast mastery line. Only one trait line should be dedicated to the profession mechanic, and it should be awesome!
Marksmanship should also be looked at. Opening strikes is not that amazing, and should be changed/replaced with useful 5/15 point traits (possibly a +300 range for all ranged weapons as one of the traits), and a 10% damage boost trait for the 25 pt trait. The general theme of this trait line should be improving ranged weapons. Move and condense all ranged traits into this line, additionally traps should be moved here due to their conditions and the line’s condition duration synergy. Trap traits should also be condensed to make them more useful without needing to invest 30 pts. (Also, I consider traps to be ranged because they can be thrown.)
Skirmishing 5/15/25 point traits have too much emphasis on swapping weapons, and if using a ranged weapon, it is unlikely that you will be flanking your target unless they are running away. This allows your target to weaken your damage output if they know just to face you, and since rangers have very little stealth compared to thieves this is rather unfair in my opinion. Additionally, spotter and signet traits should be moved here. Signet traits should be condensed so you don’t need to invest 30 pts for them to be useful. This trait line should greatly increase constant damage, that also makes that most sense based on its attributes (crit damage and crit chance).
Wilderness survival is nice, but the condition removal should be more available. Also, move and condense all damaging condition based traits here.
Nature magic should be all about boons and group support. Move and condense all traits with group boons here. This should be the line that makes people want a ranger with them. Also condense spirit traits, you should not need to invest 30 pts to make a type of utility skill useful.
Long Bow Skills:
Point blank shot: change from a knockback to a knockdown! This is an extremely annoying skill for all melee classes on your team, and probably contributes to some of the ranger hate!
Hunter’s shot: Make this the rooted channeled sniper like shot, which grants stealth after being fired (not on hit, to help with escaping for a now possibly dangerous situation after having been self rooted). Does increased damage based on how low the enemies health is (like a non spam-able ranged version on thief’s heart seeker), with increased range. This skill is now a finisher, and provides a little of the spike damage that the ranger needs for wvw.
Barrage: No longer self roots. Has its cast time decreased to 1 second. Has its cooldown decreased to 10 seconds. Has the number of times it hits decreased from 12 to 4. This allows this AoE skill to be used more frequently, and hit opponents more times. Usually, most people move out of it within 2 hits, making the additional 10 times it hits the area pointless. Also this will help the ranger with better mob tagging.
Rapid Fire: Increased to 12 hits. Channel Time is 4 seconds. Vulnerability is removed. A few of the arrows apply a 1/4 second daze. This helps to shut down and stop an opponents burst skills if timed, helping the ranger to prolong the fight.
Long range shot: Damage tiers are no longer based on range, but this skill instead has additional increased range.
I see so much of the pets / no pets discussion in this thread. What I find weird is that so many people take the stance that only the way they want to play the ranger should be implemented.
I think that both playing with a heavy emphasis on pets or with very little emphasis should be possible. Personally, when I first made a ranger during the open beta weekends, I wanted to play a character that felt like Legolas or Robin Hood, not like Tarzan king of the jungle; however I am sure that some people would love to be able to play like that.
I find that many of the weapon skills give the feeling that I was looking for, but the pet gets in the way not only in the damage output that I would have liked to do in WvW when defending or attacking near walls, but also with the theme that I want.
Idea Intro:
Personally, I think there should be a couple 10 point beast mastery traits which dramatically change the way the profession mechanic works. I believe that having traits which modify the profession mechanic to work differently exist in other classes (such as a thief being able to trait for steal to steal boons, or to grant boon upon stealing, or to do damage and heal, or even to stun or grant stealth) so it wouldn’t be such a long shot for this to be acceptable for a ranger to get.
New 10 point beast mastery trait: Your damaging stats are reduced by 30%, but you now have two pets out at once, with 4 total pets that are summoned in sets of 2. Pets now cleave.
New 10 point beast mastery trait: You gain the ability to merge with your pet, gaining an ability and stat increase according to its family. All skills that grant the pet a boon, now give it to you instead while merged.
Beast Mastery 5 pt trait: Your pets lose conditions every X seconds and heal Y amount every second, when merged this applies to you.
Okay guys, I have some theories & rumors that will happen in GW2!
Being able to sort for what your specific class can wear via the Trading Post. YES
Anet will shut down gw2, buy dungeon fighter from nexon and run that instead as a competitive game. Doubt it
Ritualist and Dervish, totally coming to the game. They will be introduced early on in the future expansion patch, and at the end of the patch, you will need to complete the final mission to unlock Paragon. Doubt it, even though I want my scythe back
Capes. Want this, but doubt it
Guild Wars.
Instanced Dragon Raids. Teq and other meta events turned into instanced fights. Group size increased to 8 for this. raid groups introduced. Normal mode Dragon fights: 24 man. Hard mode dragon fights introduced, group size: 40. Doubt it
Tier 7 armor – Transendant armor. minimal but noticable increase from ascended and exotic. Legendary armor introduced at same tier. Both doubt it and do not want it
Level cap increased to 85. Want this, 5 more trait point = possible new fun builds
Remove log out button. As if
Herobrine introduced. What?
Perma-death. LOL nice one, but doubt it
Necromancers can use Greatswords. Interesting….. now give them to thieves please
New instanced raid boss introduced that req. 50 AR to fight in normal mode. Doubt it
HOPE MY THREAD DOESN’T GET LOCKED BECAUSE SOME OF THESE ARE ACTUAL RUMORS Are they really?…
It’s not far off from initiative and steal for the thief. They’re pretty much equally complex profession mechanics. I think the initiative mechanic might be about a hair more complex than the steal, but that’s it.
This is very true. I’d also like to add that I can essentially ignore and not spec around either steal or initiative regen traits on my thief and not lose significant damage or viability. I run a 0/30/30/10/0 D/D build on my thief with 0 initiative gain traits, and only use steal as a gap closer that sometimes has an added bonus that I may use just because and can do perfectly fine with it.
Too bad rangers are still tethered to their horrible pet, and all of the damage they lose because of it.
The ranger was the first profession that I played in this game before getting fed up after all of the nerfs against shortbow to prevent a damage build, deleted it, made a thief and have yet to regret it. The pokemon collectors can keep their pets, I’ll just make sure to always target them first because I know how easy of a target most can be. Ranger tears in WvW are delicious!
(edited by Thighum.7295)
Specific Game Mode
PvE & WvW
Proposal Overview
A better balance around pets needs to be found. In other professions, the profession mechanic is a bonus, even if you don’t plan to spec around it. On the ranger, damage is reduced with the idea that you will spec for the pet and that it will make up for it, it isn’t a bonus but a hindrance. Pets need to become optional, there are many situations in which they are less that ideal, such as shooting from walls in WvW at enemies, or against bosses which can easily kill our pet.
Goal of Proposal
Increase the viability of playing the ranger as an archer, while keeping the ability to choose to spec into pets who are given increased reliability.
Proposal Functionality
1) Find the ranger : pet damage ratio (full glass cannon ranger with highest damage pet) at 0 in beast mastery, and give the damage% the pet would do back to the ranger when it is stowed.
2) Make the pets far more useful for people who spec into beast mastery, while also condensing pet traits in that line. Overall, providing fewer, but far more powerful pet traits, while providing more of a variety of new traits to take the place of the moved pet traits in other lines.
3) Signets affect both the ranger and the pet without being traited. It makes no sense to have it only buff either the pet or the ranger since the pet IS taken into account as part of the ranger’s damage and is thus a part of the ranger itself. Signet traits increase the effectiveness of signets in other ways (possibly an added stat for each one slotted like a warrior or might stacks upon use like a thief, both of which would affect the ranger and the pet).
4) Increase range when shooting from above your target. This occurred in GW1, I see no reason why it doesn’t in GW2. At the very least, if you aren’t willing to do this, give me the same horizontal range when I shoot as if I was on flat ground against someone below me, ignoring the vertical distance difference. This should be changed for all ranged options. Its extremely annoying thinking "I wouldn’t even need to “shoot” a projectile at them, I could just drop it on them, but I am out of range because I am too high above them."
Associated Risks
1) People find that the ranger is now a fun profession to play with more of a purpose than just the pokemon collector, that bow rangers can actually fight back in WvW, and that rangers are useful in dungeons, maybe even taking that 4th warrior’s slot!
2) I’d remake the ranger that I deleted almost a year ago out of frustration and go back to fighting people in WvW with it as I did before you nerfed the damage on short bow (because of that epic “animation” problem) and even its range, in addition to the general quickness nerf, and then moving the 5 pt nerfed quickness trait to a 30 pt beast mastery trait. …Just thinking about all of the things you did to prevent rangers from being able to play like an archer reminds my of why I deleted it! RAGE!
d/p doesnt need tuning DOWN…i think they should INCREASE the aoe circle from BPS by 60 radius….POSSIBLY turn it down to 3 secs and 5 init isntead. that way the thief can actually use the BP rather than get beat tohell inside it. right now its almost useless against good players.
I both agree and disagree with your statement at the same time.
I agree that the AOE circle size should be increased, it is too small right now.
However I do feel that the black powder + heart seeker combo is way too easy to use, and too difficult for the opponent to prevent, and thus it draws a lot of hate towards our profession.
I bet if they could find a way to slightly change this without completely destroying d/p we’d see far fewer complaints against thieves.
Thankfully this isn’t happening. So far only the reduction of the poison field is known. None of the rest is known. According to the mod, someone mixed some of what we were told already with stuff they made up.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/RE-Leaked-patch-notes
I really liked this back piece as well.
The ability to watch as it progresses while making it is awesome. They need to do this way more often. The customizable glow colors that we will get to choose later will also be really nice.
The only thing I don’t like about is that when my character runs it swings side to side so much that it looks a little odd. If only the part that looks like a jet pack was a little smaller.
I would really like if they would add a small colored flame burst from the bottom of the jet pack portion every time a character jumped. That would look epic. Probably cool enough for it to be worth being a legendary version for that effect.
I wasn’t going to make mine ascended until I got a lucky drop today… so I spent 200g leveling leather worker and making it. Was worth it, for me… but I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone. . One thing I think is great is that the exotic ones are pretty cheap and easy to make, and account bound, so they’re very alt friendly. I will likely be making an additional exotic for my alts to pass around, just so I don’t need to spend mondo fractal relics or karma on outfitting my 13 lesser alts. (1 main, 2 main alts, 13 lesser alts haha)
200g to level leatherworking and make it…ouch! I only spent 130g to level leatherworking and build it. I wonder what we did differently lol.
I saw someone advertising an all ranger guild in map chat when I was in JQ WvW like 3 days ago. I have no clue what it was called, but their message was something like: “All ranger guild recruiting for PvX. Only required rep. while on ranger.” I don’t know anything else about it though. Maybe someone else will know.
Hmph good riddance.
It’s about time the city for all five races was destroyed! Down with unity!
I want a free for all to blanket Tyria, so I can go on a rampage in the black citadel exterminating the charr as my gw1 ancestor would have desired!
Except that it is harder for a d/d thief to get into stealth through CnD in the first place because they have to get in melee range to use it compared to the bp/hs combo. Also CnD can be dodged, BP/HS combo doesn’t matter if it is dodged.
Precast CnD->Steal/InfSig is a thing and is fairly easy to land if the thief isn’t completely incompetent, and you really don’t need to do it more than once or twice in a fight unless you’re running some cheesy WvW stealth build.
As a thief player myself, I almost would like to see making stealth drop if the BS is blocked or evaded. It’s so silly to be able to just chase someone spamming BS until it connects, and is a crutch for bad thief players and a crux against skilled defenders trying to anticipate.
You can only CnD steal once in a fight due to the cool down. Since I don’t use the suicide signet build to frontload damage it usually take me about 2-3 backstabs to down someone (3 or sometimes more backstabs for warriors due to their high base health, armor, and regeneration with their other survival tools).
Blocked or evaded backstabs would basically make guardian immune to thieves due to aegis. I greatly disagree with your idea, which I have seen many times over the past few days. In order for this to work, stealth thieves would need WAY more sustain, or damage, or something.
Backstab already requires:
1) Being able to get into stealth
2) getting close to your opponent
3) a positional requirement
Have you ever fought a player with lots of AOE who spazzes out like a headless chicken doing about faces and changing direction though all the AOE while your trying to land a backstab? It’s a nightmare. <- is already more than a punishing enough counter to backstab.
It would be much better to make d/p shoot a bullet (that can be dodged to prevent the stealth) than your suggestion, which would greatly impact every stealth build in a negative manner. This way all stealth from weapon skill can be countered by dodging the skill that gives stealth, messing up would be on the player who didn’t properly dodge the very visible skills. Currently the bp→hs combo provides stealth too easily to expect people to reasonably stop it, this change would fix that.
(edited by Thighum.7295)
Above all, I think that this would be way more reasonable than the multiple suggestions to make block blind dodge etc remove thieves from stealth after a backstab. That would completely destroy all stealth builds except maybe that suicide all signet build that does a massive burst at the expense of all defense.
I think that the biggest problem with my suggestion would be doing something about making sure that p/p didn’t take p/d’s role over completely as has been mentioned by others. A buff to dagger #4 could possibly alleviate making p/p feel like it could use the pistol stealth attack more often.
I think it would also balance d/p when compared to d/d a lot more. Low risk ranged stealth with lower total damage output vs higher risk melee stealth with higher damage output. The numbers might have to be tweaked a little but I’m sure it wouldn’t be that difficult.
OP, are you trying to make braindead specs (p/p, s/p) even more braindead? Do you even realize how much dmg and CC those 2 builds would put out if your suggestion was implemented….?
Besides, d/p doesn’t get stealth for free, it is whole 9 ini, if you deny them that, they are pretty much screwed…. even if they managed to go stealth there are plenty of way to pressure them to play passive…it is way easier to predict where d/p thief went than d/d for example simply becuse of dat red circle on the floor.
D/P has to deal with same disadvantage as d/d: they have to go in melee to do any meaningful dmg thus putting themself in the dager of getting aoed/cleaved to death.
Except that it is harder for a d/d thief to get into stealth through CnD in the first place because they have to get in melee range to use it compared to the bp/hs combo. Also CnD can be dodged, BP/HS combo doesn’t matter if it is dodged. The only way you lose initiative is if someone interrupts it, but if you are targeting them it is unlikely due to the blind from the bullet currently. (You would need time to react to clear the blind and then interrupt them.) In addition, when using the trait that give back 2 initiative upon entering stealth, d/p uses 7 while CnD uses 6 (d/d requires a trait to get blind on stealth where BP gives a blinding field as part of the skill.)
P/P currently needs a buff. This would help it a lot.
I do not think this would greatly change s/p. If used, it would most likely be as a last resort when getting low on health, but you’d still need to have 6 ini to use it, and the bullet could be dodged → a thief that is almost dead and out of initiative! S/D has access to stealth, and it isn’t like you see S/D stealth heavy thieves that often.
Sorry, I misread your post. Just to be clear – you are saying the main problem with D/P is how easy it is to stealth and not the ability to stack stealth, right?
If my statement is correct and as you said yourself that you do not have a problem with stealth stacking, what are you proposing to compensate d/p theives for losing their ability to stack stealth?
It would decrease the cost of entering stealth significantly with what I proposed. BP is 6 initiative currently. This could free up a trait slot, since it wouldn’t use up as much initiative. Much like it is possible to ignore the initiative traits on d/d (I use blind on stealth, condi removal, and the regen in stealth traits). I’m not exactly sure what a d/p could take with this change, the 20 pt SA traits must have something that would work well.
I would also like to make it clear that despite it being more difficult to enter stealth, than it currently is, it would still be significantly easier to be able to enter stealth from range than from melee with CnD.
S/P would become a very strong control Spec… I wouldn’t call them OP… With P/P, it’d be a welcome change to bring P/P into serious usability, however it’d pretty much steal P/D’s purpose and function in doing so…
P/P needs a buff. The life stealing would provide it with additional survivability and a little damage.
I disagree that it would steal d/p’s purpose.
P/P would most likely remain physical damage based, I would guess the most likely rotation to be something like Black Powder -> Sneak Attack -> Unload. Repeat many times.
P/D would most likely remain more condition based, maybe a slight change would be required to reinforce this.1) You mean P/D not D/P?
2) The thing of it is, P/P with a natural stealth would put it an ideal situation to spam Sneak Attack, the crux of P/D’s condi role, at max range, when you factor in Infusion of Shadow, you’ll have a weapon set that can spam 5 stacks of life steal charged bleeding at 900 range. Thus why I suggested BP cost 9 init, so ranged stealth would always be more costly then melee stealth.
1) Thank you for catching that! I edited that posted to P/D.
2) Hmm, I think that might be tricky to figure out exactly how much would be needed. I think 9 may be a little bit too high, and would hurt d/p with this change a little too much. (It’s already losing the damage from hs, since that combo wouldn’t be used to stealth anymore.) I was thinking by making ranged stealth do practically no damage (isn’t it like 100-200 from that bullet? not sure) on stealth while melee stealth does the higher CnD damage it would be balanced.
As I don’t really use p/x that often I don’t know that much about it. But I think that a p/p would still spec for physical damage because of unload. This would mean that the bleeds would deal significantly less damage. I would assume that the p/p thief would:
black powder (gaining stealth)-> stealth skill (how does the physical damage compare to unload?) -> unload until revealed ends. I do think that p/d would need something to cement a more condition based role, possibly a change to the very weak dagger #4 skill or its #3 skill.
Edit: added that last paragraph
(edited by Thighum.7295)
S/P would become a very strong control Spec… I wouldn’t call them OP… With P/P, it’d be a welcome change to bring P/P into serious usability, however it’d pretty much steal P/D’s purpose and function in doing so…
P/P needs a buff. The life stealing would provide it with additional survivability and a little damage.
I disagree that it would steal p/d’s purpose.
P/P would most likely remain physical damage based, I would guess the most likely rotation to be something like Black Powder -> Sneak Attack -> Unload. Repeat many times.
P/D would most likely remain more condition based, maybe a slight change would be required to reinforce this.
The only real point of /D off-hand is stealth access and a poor snare… you’ve made the /P off-hand better not just in a D/P since but completely for every /P set vs it’s /D counterpart since it does Half of what the /D kit does instead of being different. At the moment only D/P has that amount of overlap and you want to extend it to the other two?
I agree that the #4 dagger skill is severely underpowered. However that skill being weak and needing a buff to be more useful should not be a reason to ignore black powder.
Keep in mind that with this change CnD -> backstab would provide way more damage than Black Powder -> Backstab. Giving a tradeoff between the two weapon sets. Currently there is no tradeoff, d/p is just better than d/d in most situations. I don’t like this either!
I didn’t suggest a buff to black powder, but a change. It would be a nerf to d/p, an addition of one more option that would most likely not be used much to s/p, and a buff to p/p.
I agree that some attention would need to be given to the /d #4 to keep the p/d as a more condition based alternative (different role), maybe even a slight change to the p/d #3.
1. Stealth is spammable? Maybe if you have an initiative pool of 50.
2. Give S/P access to stealth? This spec doesn’t need anymore help…
3. If you can’t predict the location of a thief after a bp/hs combo, that’s more on you. You can see the way they jump.
1) No you do not need 50 initiative to be in stealth for 95% of a fight. Granted wouldn’t do much, but when you pop in and out of stealth just out of range for an extended period of time waiting for the perfect backstab opportunity or retreating when your health is low, it can be rather annoying for others to fight against. This is what I do on d/p when I am playing defensively against someone.
2) I doubt it would change the s/p that much because it would cost more initiative than would be worth to use Tactical Strike.
3) I think you are taking this as me complaining because I couldn’t beat someone. Since I play a thief I have very little AOE right off the bat, this was more to help other classes who have more AOE (like eles, 95% of which die without much of a fight). In addition, the distance you jump with HS changes with how you angle your screen when not targeting someone (last I checked).
You do not fully understand the thief class and how thief use varies tools to gain long duration stealth even without the use of a /p weaponset. I’ll link a build later to show this.
Yes, I am well aware that there are other ways to enter stealth, nor did I complain about long duration stealth. Instead I focused on a weapon skill combo that allows you to get into stealth too easily.
I love how you started by insulting my knowledge of my main character, what a wonderful way to add something to this thread!
(edited by Thighum.7295)
There have been a ton of suggestions to change stealth over the past few days. Almost all of them seem to be targeted towards stealth in general, instead of directly at the main offender: the d/p thief. Many of the proposed suggestions would absolutely destroy /d thieves, which are reasonable to counter because they have to land CnD to enter stealth.
The problem is not “perma stealth,” because their stealth is not really permanent, but the ease of access to their stealth, which can be “spammed.” Due to the blind on the bullet from blackpowder, it can be very hard to interrupt the bp + hs combo in time.
I suggest changing the black powder skill, as it is the main offender.
1)Black Powder now creates a dark field instead of a smoke field.
2)The field still blinds.
3)The shot fired from Black Powder no longer blinds but grants stealth when it hits.
What does this do?
1) It is possible to dodge the fired bullet, so it can be more easily countered like CnD.
2) The bullets damage is very low, so stealthing from range comes at the cost of the difference of damage between this skill and CnD.
3) Since heartseeker would not be used, it would be easier to predict the thief’s exact location: near the field.
Other things this would do:
Give s/p and p/p access to stealth at the cost of 6 initiative.
I am doubtful that this would change gameplay much on s/p. S/d has access but rarely uses it because the s/ stealth attack skill does very little damage.
P/P needs a buff, maybe this could help that weapon set.
See if you can transmute it.
Just because people keep repeating that they want everything under the sun to reveal thieves doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
Your proposed change would destroy d/x thieves. Almost ALL of our damage is in our stealth skill.
To do this change you would need to:
1) Move a lot of the damage from the stealth attack to our #1 attack chain.
2) Change the hidden killer trait. Everyone already uses one of the things you mentioned when they see a thief go into stealth. With your change this trait would be next to useless, and would only work on afk players. Thus it would need to give + crit chance while revealed in addition, or something along those lines so that it would be worth taking.
3) You would need to give thieves more survivability abilities. In other words blocks invuln etc. to compensate for more time revealed and less time benefiting for our survivability traits which are almost all clumped into the stealth trait line.
4) No your change to the base hp of the profession as I saw in your thief post would not adequately do this. I have both a zerker and a Valkyrie gear set, the increased health only has a very slight impact. When other professions get focus fired, they can do something to prevent all damage. All a thief can do is go stealth (and is still hit by many abilities such as channeled skills or aoe).
This has been the best WvW change I have seen so far.
The map is quite fun, especially with all of the ledges, turning knockbacks into 1 hit kills.
Joking aside, the balanced numbers on each side makes it way more enjoyable than either steamrolling your opponents cause you greatly outnumber them or the opposite.
I believe that doing the same for all of the borderland maps would also be just as positive. Just need to find a way to allow guilds to all enter together.
EB however should stay as it is. Surely each server could get enough people to fill up one map. And this would still allow for server ranks, but way more balanced.
Thing is, in WvW, there is almost NO way to survive if two, good, zerker thieves (be them D/D or D/P) decide to gank you. No matter how hard you try, unless you are a thief yourself and you see it coming, or unless you are a PU mesmer or a super-tanky warrior/guardian, you will die. I roam with all the classes you see below, usually alone. And no matter how hard I try, if I’m fighting and 2 thieves join the fight, I die. Simple as that.
But I won’t complain. Not just because I play a thief myself, but mostly because I have accepted the fact that thieves are good at this. I mean, warriors are good at swinging their hammers, Eles are good at support, Necros are good at putting condi pressure… every class shines in a specific role, both in WvW and in sPvP. Thieves excel at killing weakened foes.
People must start to accept this fact.If you’re jumped by two equally skilled players regardless of the classes involved you should expect to wind up dead. If that wasn’t the case then whatever class you’re on that’s able to take that on is OP and in need of a nerf… or is a very… VERY hard counter (ex dia skin ele vs 2 dire).
You are totally right about this, but this is not my point. The rate at which thieves kill “unaware” people is really high. If you are already fighting and a couple of thieves join you will be dead in a few seconds. Other classes can achieve similar bursts of course, but such specs are way less frequent than thieves.
Of course if you are outnumbered you should not won, but I am talking about any fight here. I usually rain with my Ele with my guild, and while I can survive some ganks, if two or more thieves get me together I really don’t have the time to react – which is Fine by me, but other people get too frustrated about this and want to survive and kill everyone every time…
ROFL!
“The rate at which thieves kill “unaware” people is really high."
You do realize that if you are an “unaware” while playing a thief you will almost instantly die if someone targets you?
This sentence seems to tell all. It reminds me of a ranger I fought yesterday who was doing his bear bow thing in wvw from 1500 range. I CnD and backstabbed him 2 times in a row to down him and he NEVER EVEN MOVED AT ALL. It was like he thought he could afk in a zerg fight because he was near the back of his zerg.
People are upset that a thief can kill them when they go afk for a couple of seconds!
+hahahahaha nice one!
pve wise.. which one would be better?? normally i would thought hunter wins.. but many people are telling me hunter are worse… confusing..
What are you talking about? Hunter is not a profession in GW2.
In addition this game is less of a rock<paper<scissors set up, and is more skill based instead. I have killed many rangers with my thief, but have also been destroyed by good condi bunker ones.
If you are talking about a ranger, they are very different from thieves. Rangers are a medium armored pet class. If you like managing a pet and having it fight for you play a ranger. If you like stealth and evasion play a thief. If you just want to be OP, then join the warrior bandwagon.
I like the Dancing Dagger idea in theory, but do you really want to give P/D another ability with Torment? At least now they have to stick you in melee range or give up a utility, this would be Torment at range.
I think it might be manageable if the torment portion was for a very short duration like 2 seconds. This would give ok-good damage (depending if the target stopped moving) with enough stacks, but make it difficult to continually stack (initiative cost + short duration), while still pressuring the target to not move to reduce the damage.
For d/d and p/d I would see it as more of a way to open into a clock and dagger + stealth skill if you do not have steal (or another shadow step) available. The increased cripple time and added short duration torment would help to temporarily stop your opponent from running away from you.
Can you tell us anything about upcoming changes for the thief?
The poison field duration reduction was already know from the stream, and doesn’t really affect anything.
Thieves will be hit hard by your proposed reduction to crit damage. I use the trait hidden killer on my thief (gives 100% crit chance while in stealth) and use Valkyrie gear on my thief. During the steam I heard that full zerkers will get about a 10% overall damage reduction, I can only assume that with the 100% crit chance on my backstab burst I will be affected way more since that is the main source of my damage! What are we being given make up for the reduced burst?
Also, won’t the crit damage decrease harm the assassin stat combination more than the berserker stat? How will you fix this?
Now that two handed weapons are getting an extra slot, are you going to equalize the damage difference between two and one handed weapons? I thought that the original reason two handed weapons had more damage was because they were balanced as if they already had a 5% damage increase on them.
Ok, this is it.
I was solo roaming in WvW with my ele. I don’t usually have many problems killing stuff: coyotes, skelks, yaks, and sentries go down really fast and don’t cause much problems.However, everytime I find a thief, no matter what, I just die. And the problem is, I can’t even see him!
I just go around, then bam! Dead! I got hit by 18k spikes out of nowhere. And when I see the thief in front of me and I manage to avoid his attack, he will just go in stealth in another gimmicky way and backstab me from behind! I can’t even use my heal, because his burst is on a 0s CD!For reference, this is my build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJAodnEElXbdN6GQYrAhcIDDHIgxBQQkittenHiBA-jkxAYrAm8KiGbLoIasKJMVJRUtToIa1yAYPCA-w
I seriously hope Anet will fix stealth because at the moment it’s just too much. I get killed sometimes by zerker rangers, but at least I can see them and if I get killed it’s because they are good (their bear hits really hard and must require a lot of micromanagement to be effective!). But when it comes to thieves, it’s just 0 risk, 101% reward, go stealth kill people #yolomode
Very well said
You are the million player to confirm and experience this outrageousness class design.
So the next question is.
How many more years will it take for our concerns to be heard and addressed ?
4+ years ??
I say 10+ years
whose with me?
ROFL did you look at his build? Once you do you will realize this entire post was a joke.
After playing with a condition based d/d build for a while, the weaknesses of the 3rd skill became apparent.
Death Blossom
1) The after cast on the skill makes it feel awkward.
2)Lack of control. It is very easy to accidentally jump somewhere you didn’t mean to with it.
2a) In the new wvw map this can be deadly, especially if you get in a fight near a ledge.
My suggestion:
Remove the after cast, and make people “aim” it like the warrior’s great sword skill whirlwind attack. This would remove the awkward pause after using it, and would provide the much needed control this skill requires to be more useful.
Dancing Dagger:
1) Very little damage.
2) Very short cripple which isn’t worth much.
3) Too high of an initiative cost for its effects.
I remember when this skill actually did damage. The problem people complained about was it bouncing and doing damage to them multiple times. (Especially rangers w/ a pet)
I also know that some people don’t like the idea of removing the ability to hit multiple foes with it because they use it to help group up enemies for death blossom.
My suggestion:
Enlarge the size of the thrown dagger, and make it piercing. This means that it only hits people once, but can still hit multiple foes. This should allow the damage to be upped, along with the cripple. However, why not add torment stacks instead of physical damage. This would slow enemies down, and punish them for moving. (What I believe this skill was originally intended to do.) The lengthened cripple, and slight additional damage from torment would improve this skill for physical damage users, but the torment would also make this a very good skill for d/d condition users.
What do you think?
My crit damage from my gear is approximately +70%. What would happen if ANET just removed that stat from gear and instead added +50% to the base crit damage?
This would be the same approximate decrease in spike crit damage as turning it into ferocity if you had around 50% crit chance, however I believe that it would open up more armor combination variation.
Power, Precision, and Condition damage would be the new berserker. This would make glass cannon hybrid builds possible. Full strength physical damage with full strength condition damage.
Power, Precision, and Toughness would also become a major player for those who use weapons without damaging conditions.
Power, Precision, and Vitality may also be popular for those who have low base health and lack damaging conditions.
Despite these becoming the major stat combos, this would buff all of the underused stat combinations, especially those with precision, making them more useful.
Celestial Armor would need a buff, and everyone with a stat combo that had crit damage on it would need a free change, just like for magic find gear.
Finally, it would make it so that physical damage had 2 stats just like condition damage does, helping to bring more balance with the number of stats needed to be effective.
This is just an idea, but I think it would change the PVE meta WAYYYY more than implementing ferocity. I mean everyone will keep running berserker after the nerf because no one needs the extra defense/health against the same old content, and slow hitting monsters. In addition, ferocity will hurt assassin gear more than berserker gear, so berserker would truly become the only glass cannon stat with ferocity implemented.
I miss mobs in pve that actually had builds and used their skills like actual players. Also, if I remember right, they ran out of aoe. Still can’t understand why the mobs in gw2 are stupider than those in gw1.
Also I miss the assassin.
And the armor the assassin wore. Why was medium armor in gw1 so much more diverse, while in gw2 its just trench coats.
Also I miss factions and nightfall. I also miss missions and hard mode missions.
Finally, didn’t necro minions look way cooler in gw1 than in gw2.
The changes to Crit-Damage imply that the scaling of stats is a concern. So this may indicate an increase in level-cap, possibly tied to a new expansion.
Raising the level cap would do far more harm than good.
Hmm, I wouldn’t actually mind a raised level cap as long as I got more trait points. I really want to make a 30/30/30/30/30 build.
Dude! Thieves are OP as it is. With high damage output and EXTREME precision and critical hit chance weapon’s don’t matter! Stealth helps too. Be happy for theif to be amazing anyway.
This is not about being OP or not, this is about expanding the build diversity. With limited choices on weapon sets, most Thieves run the same build.
Do you believe then that it is fair and balance that other professions have access to a wide variety of skills from weapon sets while the Thief profession is singled-out and pigeon-holed into few weapon set choices?
If Anet wants to balance the professions, then Thieves deserve at least 10 weapon sets.
But dude, you don’t get it. Thieves are OP as it is! Their builds are OP. If you give them more diversity they will have more diverse OP builds. And stealth helps too. Be happy we have many OP builds, and EXTREME stats in precision and critical hit chance that trumps whatever weapon we use. Like nerf them more till balanced, maybe take away a weapon since they have too many OP builds.
(Like I said this thread isn’t going to go anywhere… mainly due to “thief OP”)
I disagree. Thieves are not inherently “OP”. People just greatly dislike dealing with stealth. If thieves had more viable weapons that involved far less stealth, then there would be far less complaining about thieves. Unfortunately as it is, most thief builds outside of PVP involve stealth spamming, which infuriates many people. Without stealth in WvW, a thief is a walking loot bag, I think that’s what most of the complainers really want.
I agree. Thief needs more weapon sets so we have more builds to choose from (hopefully less stealth and position requirements).
I would love to see:
A rifle. Thief needs a long range weapon in WvW.
An offhand sword. For the simple reason that dual wielding is cool. I’d love to see lots of boons from it to give a completely different play style. Hello regen, protection, and stability.
A scythe. Medium-short range w/ lots of cleave, aoe, conditions, and teleports.
Stealth Attack) Inflict confusion on all nearby foes. Additional stacks given to each foe based of the number of conditions already applied to them.
1a) Quickly swing your scythe. Crit chance and Crit damage for this skill are greatly increased for every condition on your opponent, but greatly decreased for every boon on your opponent.
b) Inflict a random condition on every opponent hit.
c) Life steal. The amount stolen is multiplicatively increased for every condition on your foe.
2) Teleport to selected location where you inflict cripple + torment to all adjacent foes.
3) All nearby crippled foes are dazed (1/4 second) and begin bleeding.
4) All nearby foes are poisoned, and you gain protection, regen, and stability for 2 seconds for every foe with 4 or more conditions that was hit.
5) All nearby enemies are pulled to you. You lose all of your boons. For every boon lost, all nearby foes lose a boon, and have 1 random condition inflicted.
^ That last weapon is what I really want.
One thing that should be maintained across all new thief weapons is lack of stealth on weapon skills. Of course balanced to allow for way more non stealth builds.
I agree with this too. It would make balancing skills way easier if there wasn’t such a difference between some classes.
It may also make balancing PVE bosses easier since currently some classes can be easily instantly killed while others aren’t due to base stat differences.
EWWWWW did the op really suggest a subscription model?!?!
Though, I do think they focus on the cash shop a little too much in gw2 atm.
I would rather see expansions that cost money but are WAY bigger than what the living story is giving us. All of cantha or Elona or Northern Tyria + Crystal Desert +rest of Orr + those volcanic islands would be 3 prime candidates imo.
Subscriptions → grindy things to keep people in game.
Cash Shop → Increased inequality between rich and poor players (especially with the currency exchange), increased RNG, and fewer things added to the world because they are saved for the cash shop.
Expansion B2P Model → Lots of content because their primary income would depend on it. (Like in gw1).
Thief: I want the weapon that pink person is using about 1 min into this vid.
Would be so awesome to have mid ranged cleaving attacks. +haha
I generally agree with the OP.
-Ascended gear needs to enter pvp.
-Food needs to enter pvp. (Maybe they’ll realize that the +/- condi food %s are ridiculous compared to the others then!)
-Skill splits need to end. (This leads to unbalanced things in one game mode but not others.)
-Ranger pets are stupid/slow and need an update.
-PVE in general is slow and mindless. It can be extremely monotonous when you can approach every enemy in practically the same way. Dodge the big slow obvious attacks and dps them down. All of the slow big attacks are the reason berserker gear is so popular.
-I would like to add that PVE should mirror PVP more. Down states should be added for all enemies to force people to stomp them.
-All PVE enemies should start dodging out of AOE, or big attacks (if they haven’t already used their dodges).
-All PVE enemies need a full skill bar with 5 weapon skills, 1 heal skill, and 3 utility skills. Champs should all have an elite skill. Enemies in GW1 used skills well, much better than they do in GW2 anyways. They actually had builds, that made you adjust your strategy to effectively fight them. If PVE taught players how to fight other classes and builds more effectively I bet we’d see way less whining on every profession’s forums.
-Defiant needs to go. It makes control pointless in PVE. I liked the OP’s suggestion to prevent people from completely stunlocking a boss.
-Condition cap in PVE also needs to go. I don’t really care how, but it does. I’m sure they could come up with something. Afterall, this is only a problem in PVE where bosses have crazy high HP. Any player with 25 stacks of anything is a deadman.
People comparing steal to the movement skills on greatsword just is wrong. STEAL REQUIRES a TARGET. If you use steal without a target it goes on a 20+ second cd with no added movement. In addition, it is a profession mechanic, and if you don’t trait for steal its like a 30 second cd.
Warrior gs skills have a shorter cd, and work without a target. What are you trying to compare here?
For anyone who’s ever picked up a sword, a dagger/sword combination would seem ludicrous. In fact the off hand sword is a nice fantasy idea but it doesn’t suit a nimble balanced thief at all since you need to sacrifice balance to get the power through the body into the off hand. I personally hope they add torches, maces, and even two handed swords before they give thieves heavy off hand weapons.
I agree, a 2 handed sword would be cooler than an offhand one.
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