Guild Wars 2

Gaudrath.6725:

So I figure there is very little to be upset about. Including cash-grab schemes, because if you are naive enough to think ANet is in the business of making everyone feel toasty warm inside instead of making money, then stop playing this game and get out in the real world a bit more and possibly get a job so you can understand what “business” means.

There is something to this, kind of.

Honestly, I think A-net is the ones being naive. In their efforts to get a smallish audience of people willing to gamble for miniatures to gamble away some cash, they are missing massive opportunity in the form of a game public that is very, very used to the concept of the F2P gaming model.

I’ll single myself out as an example. I’m 39 years old, middle class and have been playing computer games since before the introduction of the Atari 2600(I’m only quantifying this to give some idea of gaming experience and buying power). Raising kids and running a household, gaming is a very effective use of the entertainment dollar because a sixty dollar game will give many, many more days and hours of play than virtually any other expenditure of the same size. Incidentally, I’m also relatively close to the average demographic that is a solid target audience for F2P modelling—-this level of experience and buying power is the opposite of unique, it’s the norm.

With that much game experience little fluff items, especially when gambled for, are more or less a charity “tip” nod to the company that made a game. They don’t particularly extend the play time of the game and worse, if a person gets frustrated with an actual cash purchase, didn’t offer playability to keep them around to purchase the next batch. That isn’t to say offering “pay to win” items is the answer: players have overwhelmingly voted with their wallets against this model and in my opinion, rightly so.

So what’s a company to do? They need a product to sell, and it needs to be something people will actually feel gives them value. Here’s the stuff I usually see as value added:

1. Character/Bank slots, etc. They don’t affect character power, but are very value added. The game has offered them up, thankfully, and I’m sure they are among the most common purchases.

2. Just let people buy the minis, and absolutely, positively don’t give them away to those that do not. No gambling, no repeats obtainable in game. Volume makes up the added cash from the few willing to test RNG with real cash.

3. Give skins for armor/weapons that are unique to the store.

4. Let obtainable in game fluff be purchasable, in its entirety. Armor/Weapons, minis, etc. If a person would simply rather buy aesthetics, for petes sake let them. It doesn’t hurt anyone and can only help.

Some of this stuff is kinda/sorta available, but is either horrendously priced or not in a variety worthy of note. In my opinion, this is a much better model than kitten off the few people that are willing to test RNG once or twice, inevitably leaving a longer term audience with significantly less interest in purchases.

I suppose I should clarify. Scepter is weak in general, compared to any other 1,2,3 abilities an elementalist could be carrying.

Fire: A low damage DD+reasonable burn condition, A hovering spike that does good damage+ more burn, and a GTAOE that does good damage and gives vigor, which is nice(but hardly tough to attain). It can keep a burn going ad-infinitum and has two blast finishers(which are quite handy) but overall DD damage is significantly less than dagger or even staff.

Air: A channeled lightning, a burst lightning, and a blind. Really quite weak, though to be fair, air staff isn’t all that great either(nice abilities, crappy cast times or cooldowns). Doesn’t really touch dagger here.

Water: Probably the best auto-attack of the three weapons for damage(staff trounces it for utility with the melee heal here), it also provides a vulnerability AE(very comparable to staff) and an AE heal that also does damage. By contrast, the same heal with staff offers a water field. Dagger would have to give up the healing breath and a chill.

Earth: A decent bleed stack auto, a quasi protective rock barrier(weak damage but projectile finisher), and yet another blind. The staff will give you weakness condition, a good bleed stacker with another combo field(they have to stay in range of the blast for it to work, a problem shared with scepter attacks), and a projectile reflect. Dagger gets the same good bleed stacks and a nice gap closer/reflect/cleanse.

Globally, the scepter has more range than the dagger but less than the staff. The dagger offers much more utility than I’d mentioned, and a drastically greater burst. At range, the scepter has modestly faster cooldowns than the staff, though this is somewhat moot since staff cooldowns leave something available to use on virtually any attunement shift anyway.

So I’ll tie it in to the subject matter, the focus. The best thing that the scepter has going for it is that the offhand focus fleshes it out a great deal. The focus works better with the scepter than the dagger because offhand dagger delivers much more burst potential with a side order of control that rounds out a mainhand dagger. If using an offhand dagger, a mainhand dagger simply supports the non-ranged aspect of these abilities to a far greater degree. There is a very good reason that dagger/dagger is a go-to staple for so many.

The staff gives up the off hand focus items the scepter would attain, but gains several more combo fields, ae damages(and an ae heal), and utility items. This is where the synergy problem lies with scepter/focus vs. a staff. A staff user will likely be able to work through all or most of the cooldowns in an attunement, whereas a scepter user will have focus items not necessary at that time, leaving the scepter user to fall back on their modest scepter abilities until the defensive focus items come into play.

So yes, in general, scepter is weak. I’m not saying it’s cripplingly, “lfg no scepter elementalist” weak, nor that it is without it’s uses. I am saying that using a focus largely leaves you “stuck” with the lackluster scepter in your mainhand, and that we’d see more focus elementalists if the scepter packed more oomph.

As a point of trivia, my elementalist toolkit currently consists of a staff, a focus, and a scepter(I admittedly use the staff quite a bit more). I haven’t owned a dagger since level 60 or so.

Navzar.2938:

I don’t feel like it has as much synergy with the mainhand weapons for some reason.

This is my primary reason for not using it much, too. The focus itself is pretty good, but offhand dagger meshes very cleanly with mainhand dagger because it has the “right kind” of movement and defensive skills with some strong offensive uses as well. The scepter is just weak in general, which makes using a non-damage offhand all the more difficult to justify, especially when you can pump out comparable utility and maintain a much higher direct impact with the staff.

In other words, I think that a buff to scepter functionality would bring the focus into play much more often.

The first twenty or thirty levels where hell, and I nearly hung it up too. As some have mentioned, part of playing the elementalist requires a paradigm shift in thinking compared to cloth caster classes in other games.

Survivability lends itself very well. The earth/water lines give strong substance to survivability, even with damage oriented traits selected. The arcane line, unfortunately, gives the class a myriad of things that probably should be baseline—Elemental Attunement feels absolutely mandatory and I really couldn’t imagine playing without it, as the biggest example(the second being the "make staff AE effects larger, which could be reworded to “make staff worth bothering with” and still be accurate).

I could never come to terms with the scepter or a focus. While I like the focus abilities, the scepter is so poor that I just can’t bring the defensive focus into play very well, and with the dagger the offhand dagger compliments it to such a large degree that the focus just seems out of the question.

The staff seems to give a much more “caster like” benefit all around. Great AOE, strong cripples, and strong survivability/utility. It does seem to lack pretty heavily in burst damage but handles well with a sustained damage/utility oriented build.

Thieves have taken enough loss to not be nearly the problem that they where a couple months back. In sPvP a small scale combat happens often enough to be in “their house”, but frankly in WvW they really aren’t hammering the world.

I admit, though, I do find the official description kind of funny. Thieves have a multitude of ways to get rid of periodic damage on them. They are relatively easy to burst down if you start landing hits, but conditions are not the answer that counters them.

I realize that folks consistently try to remove the parallel to a normal human physique, but it is undeniably there.

Warriors are fit. Warriors of any era are no exception. Time spent training creates strength, and with strength speed and athletic dexterity. The notion that all the time a “warrior race” would spend drinking and eating and partying it up would leave them overweight is a huge stretch.

Look at the warriors, athletes, essentially anyone capable of physical prowess in the human race. They are invariably fit. Directly to the topic, look at women as military personel, martial artists, and athletes. While certainly not all “ripped”. they are universally all quite fit. As am odd twist, a great majority of the very fit wind up with a “pretty” face as well, because being fit and health directly creates the physical attributes that the human race relates to as being attractive: in fact, the human race is unique in that the unattractive even have mating opportunies. Mating possibilities rapidly deteriorate and undesirable characteristics are bred out of other species because they instinctively do not create fat, unfit generations that may not survive to continue the species.

So….the moral of the story is that a warrior race WILL instinctively continue the survival of its species exclusively through body types that guarantee its continued survival.

On a decidedly less scientific note, I have three daughters and a wife. They invariably opt for traits on character creation that they find attractive. Clothing choices, however, are usually conservative.

Anhangare Odin.1238:

2. Make the other transform skills on par with Snow Leopard form.

This is pretty much it. The attacks are actually fairly ok, on par with the warrior Juggernaught at least(not that Juggernaught makes many bars either).

The prime problem is that you can’t move while using any of them, which renders them entirely useless in WvW(can’t use racials in Spvp anyway) and surprisingly useless in even light PvE.

The secondary problem with the racials is cooldown. Not only are the forms weaker than any class inherent elite, but the cooldown is so long that you can’t even be weaker nearly often enough!

So…skill use on the move, half the cooldown, and suddenly there are relevant flavor abilities.

The exchange rate is going to stay high, and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t get higher.

The first is players desire for the stuff. If I look at 100 gems worth of real money, how much in game stuff do I want from that? The 30 silver that I’d have gotten two months ago? No way. Absolutely no way in hell I’d spend that much money for 30 silver pieces. It’s debatable whether or not I’d consider spending that much money for 1 gold, even.

The account stuff is probably worth getting—it’s akin to permanently opening up the rest of the game without having to pay subscription costs to get it. Buying gems to get this, however, doesn’t add any to the gem/gold trade, with the exception of any left overs.

The rest of the stuff….yeah. Boosters aren’t even close to worth money, though they might be if buying a pack of them gave you a pile that was actually economical.

Nothing in chests is worth money, in my opinion. Miniatures and the like…..erm, ok. If you want to spend your money just to kick in for your game, great. If you want them, great. But for most, this stuff just isn’t worth it.

What this essentially means is that if I buy gems to get gold, I expect to get GOLD for them, not silver, and that means the price needs to stay up. If I buy gems to get stuff, it’d better be good stuff, and outside of the bank/character/inventory slots, I have a hard time justifying it.

A couple of the beards are fine, but yeah, there aren’t any really good “long” ones.

Also, most of the kitten things don’t have a mustache with them, and that just ain’t right, no matter what style you’re going after, unless you’re going for Amish or something.

I don’t really know a good format to tackle these with(but I think it’s a great topic, so I want my 2 cents:P), so I’m afraid I’m going with the maligned “quote/response” (with quote shortened because I got too wordy for the forum)format. I apologize for this in advance.

Plague.5329:

Axe (Eviscerate) – Deals damage. No ut…….st sort of there.

I somewhat disagree here, as I have managed 10k crits against light and 8k crits against medium armor with it. Since axe/axe can whip up an adrenaline bar virtually at will, I find it to be a strong and useful burst skill. The small gap closer with it is icing on the cake.

Greatsword (Arcing Slice) – Grants Fury. That’s all. As …………….amage in a line (and making a combo field) and setting people on fire. That’d be cool, wouldn’t it? Oh well.

I agree here. For lack of a better description, I find this attack to be a steaming kitten Running a greatsword build means I get all the “full bar bonuses” with every spec because I’ll always have that full bar. I’ve no reason to empty it with the GS out.

Hammer (Earthshaker) – Deals damage, ………………..h damage move. Very useful. I love you, hammer, even with your many shortcomings.

Agree here, probably my favorite overall burst ability. It just plain works, and meshes well with the rest of the weapon.

Longbow (Combustive Shot) – AoE fire field that causes burning. ……………….classes. But on a Warrior, it’s rare enough to be invaluable. Almost exclusively a PvE skill, as a result.

Probably my third-favorite burst ability, primarily to bring a combo field to the table. If longbow itself didn’t field such wretched damage, I think this one would be livable due to utility.

Mace (Skull Crack) – Single-target stun. ………………not basing any builds around.

Another one that, in my opinion, showcases the overall weakness off the main weapon abilities. Mace auto attack is pretty slow, and 2,3 add little to nothing in terms of damage. In a game with no trinity, the 1,2,3-burst of this weapon are tailor made for tanking style combat. That said, as an “off weapon” to set up something like 100b or similar, it has its uses.

Rifle (Kill Shot) – Similar to Eviscerate in that it only deals damage. Very obvious, long wind up animation (probably the longest in the game). Self-roots. …………. other than being a projectile finisher. Basically worthless.

Nearly every other class in the game begs to differ on the “basically worthless” kill shot. This thing hits, and hits big. If your opponent doesn’t burn something to mitigate or avoid this damage, you win the fight, hands down.

Kill Shot, in my opinion, is a good example of what a high damage burst ability should be. The damage is brutal and stacks well with buffs/gear, but it’s slow and obvious, which makes it avoidable. They could rename this one “cull the herd” and it’d be more fitting, because the key to using it is to successfully find the guy that isn’t smart enough to avoid it, and you will kill him.

Sword (Flurry) – Multi-hit bleeding attack that roots enemies with immobilize. ………………………useful in the future, as Sword is meant to be a chaser and pressure weapon, in a game currently dominated exclusively by spike damage.

I wanted to like this ability. I spent a good deal of my first hours at 80 trying to make sword primary work. It really just doesn’t.

Again, a burst ability that doesn’t mesh well with the weapon. Sword is about bleeds and mobility. The burst yields bleeds, to be sure, but completely abandons the mobility concept. It suffers the same “I stand there and flail wildly” problem as 100b, except there is no real payday. For this thing to work, a person needs to have no immobilize breaker, no condition removal, and no means to down the warrior before the bleeds do their job.

In my opinion, it could almost swap places with the off-hand sword #4 ability(perhaps with a commensurate burst sized damage boost added) and not be out of place.

Water burst skills – lol. Forceful Shot is just the rifle burst underwater. It’s terrible. Whirling Strike is an AoE stun. Works all right. But you’re still underwater.

I agree on Forceful Shot. While I find plenty of use for kill shot on land, in water is a different game and it just doesn’t work. The AOE stun works well enough, and it’s a good addition to a group underwater, but on its own merits it seems awfully weak. In PvP, it rarely decides a fight and in PvE, it’s more likely to add a neutral water mob to the fight than actually mitigate damage over the course of the contest.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

It’s the core concept like everyone has been screaming about thieves “No one should be able to put out this kind of damage” or how about the one everyone likes to say “If I had an Instant Kill ability on a 5 min cool down and cast time would that be ok? No”

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, if you are saying this about thieves mesmers and engis you have to say it for warrior too

Yeah real easy to dodge in WVW with people running all over like you are going to be focused on that 1 warrior out of how many mesmers and other toons?

It doesn’t matter “how easy you think it is to dodge” no one should put out that kind of damage, half my toons have 13k up -17k this would one shot most.

If you are level 80 and fielding 13-17k HP you have not built yourself for survivability. You have made a conscious choice to be killable by dust mites, small breezes, and moldy bread crusts. Glass cannons have no place EVER complaining that they get hit too hard, they literally specced and geared to be hit for too high a percentage of their health by everything.

I fully agree that burst on the whole should be looked at in this game, and I don’t necessarily disagree that warrior burst should be among those looked at.

The majority of data, however, should not be based upon players that have made a conscious effort to be as killable as possible. Even my thief has 23k hp—and yes, my enemies still void their bowels when his backstab connects.

Alot of this really boggles my mind.

I just rolled up a thief because I’d fiddled with one in the past and never really got to even know the class—1-2 with daggers was enough to piddle around in PvP with and frankly I wasn’t getting any opportunity to really dive in and learn the class because of the foolish ease of this playstyle.

The class actually has a ton of depth, and a wide variety of ways to be played. Not all are particularly effective, but most seem to be yielding at least functional results. That said, the directly overpowered nature of the dagger attacks pretty much obsoletes all of this other stuff, and beyond that diminishes the ability for others to really get behind the changes and bug fixes needed to really make these playstyles something that glows.

A few things mentioned in this thread really strike me as odd.

1. “Backstab is hard to land” Perhaps, if you’re missing digits on your right hand and have your attack keys bound to the numpad. Outside of that, it is not difficult to land at all. It’s simply not difficult. It’s the easiest positional I’ve ever had access to in any game and the back arc is extremely forgiving.

2. “The difficult initiative mechanic”, or some such rot that I saw earlier in this post……are you serious? Being able to spam ANY attack outside of your auto is beyond the grasp of every other class. The thief can use whatever is suitable at any time, even if that means it’s suitable twice in a row—-heartseeker obviates the ease that is the initiative mechanic. Once an enemy is below 50% health(I.E., directly after a successful steal/backstab salvo) Heartseeker is more or less “go to”, over and over. Call it “noob”, call it whatever you want. It works, and that’s just a fact. Ironically, about the only good reasons to not pummel your opponent with this is that they’ve countered with a heal(bringing them out of heartseeker effective range), shown you their back(at which time auto attack is dandy, since it’s backstab chain all over again), or if you’ve jumped into a real melee and can’t really hang long enough and should use an escape.

3. “Thief defense is low”………yeah. No, it’s not. Thief defense is built around escapes and dodges. Vigor is plentiful, endurance is plentiful, caltrop/dodge is easy to get, and a wide variety of stealths and shadow strikes makes getting out of the way pretty easily. Virtually all off-hand attacks are defensive in nature. I’ve been playing a build that fields 23k hp and survivability is remarkable—DPS isn’t as stupid high as the three hit wonder builds that are out there, but it’s plenty to scare the pants off of tough guys and kill weak ones.

I do agree with some assertions, though. Pistol Whip really didn’t need a nerf—it’s damage is very similar to that of 100b(yes, somewhat lower, but comes with a stun built in). The damage is high, but easily avoidable, and not in the “use your psychic powers to dodge my instant stealthed ranged attack from behind” easy, I do mean legitimately easy. The only people that are going to eat it have been set up pretty hard to do so.

Dual pistol seems pretty lackluster. Damage is mediocre, rate of fire on auto attack is mediocre, and its big salvo(unload) often doesn’t even seem to warrant a dodge by opponents. Utility is ok, but it seems to need some more baked in goodies, such as more bleeds and probably a real cripple.

Shortbow has really strong utility, reasonable damage, and requires some level of finesse to actually utilize as it is ground target based.

Anyway, that’s my overall take on the class. Dagger appears to have some major tipping point in imbalance, but the rest seems to have at least some measure of balance to it.

CompositeAwe.9463:

2. the running on all fours does turn a few people off. personally i think it looks cool.

All but one of my characters is a norn, and the last is a Charr. The driving force behind not being able to get steam with a Charr has been two things in total:

The above quoted is the first. My first Charr character, I literally logged him in, played him until he got down on all fours, and deleted him. It’s unbearable. After having some experience with the game my Charr wound up having to be an engineer because I can get perma-swiftness and entirely eliminate that horrible run.

The second is that my first character was a norn warrior. Since having another warrior seems redundant to me, finding a Charr class that “feels right” has been difficult. My heart isn’t into the thief and I don’t get a Charr feel when I try to make it a caster. Engineer seems to be working well enough, though all told the only true Charr feel would have come from a warrior, IMO.

Norns say it, and I can’t say for certain but it seems to mostly tie into the fury buff.

Once in awhile I’ll say something like “crack skulls” too, but I can’t seem to figure what I’m doing to get all tough like that:P

Honestly, and as much as it kind of pains me to offer it up, if your server is so small it can’t field an arrow cart, switch servers. Take your whole guild, and friends that’ll listen, and just up and leave.

I did it about a week and a half ago or so and couldn’t be happier with the choice. I don’t really like that it degenerated to the point that I tried that, as I’m not historically much of a server hopper(at one time I was the best tank on the worst server in WoW, and our whole guild held fast in this position even though we could’ve probably switched servers and been much more).

WvW is made of numbers. A large, more or less full battleground at most times yields the best play experience you can find there. Siege weapons are suddenly powerful tactical tools, not skirmisher decimating kill machines. Large groups can be answered with large groups.

The sooner the smaller servers get completely abandoned/merged to make bigger servers, the better it will be for any WvW participants, IMO.

And yes, I do think that Anet should monitor and properly spread the populations with transfers like these so that things balance out better. Rather than the mass guild “superserver” creation that the first free transfers created.

Add to all that, WvW brackets settled in a great deal this week. Low pop servers dropped a bracket, high pop moved up a bracket, and there is suddenly a great many more people able to find it more playable.

Even more organized guilds get a participation. Higher rewards, no set number of people, and more tangible goals. A skirmish sized group can run and gun all day long if they want to, without having to ever really join “the zerg”.

No, it’s not even remotely close to the same kind of PvP as the stuff in Heart of Mists, but to a fair degree I think it pulls from the same playerbase.

A restructuring of point gain versus strategy would help more than less players per match, in my opinion.

The reason you’ve got 8vs8 on a single node is because winning/losing that fight, then rolling back over and retaking the node nobody defended is just as likely to win the game and has a drastically, not even comparable level of personal income.

You’d see matches engaged in more strategy if:

Kills gave less. You get personal 15 points per kill as a grand total. Five if you more or less “tap” the kill and move on.

When dealing with low total numbers(we can’t exactly shave a zero off here), making things make more sense seems to be a better option. I’d suggest not giving points for “re-killing” a person if you have not gained points from another method in between, or perhaps if other criteria have not been met. This could completely eliminate farming the middle of a road, and would behoove a person to fight in tactically sound environments compared to the objectives. With the current game, that obviously would be difficult, so:

Give defender points. Perahps a significant point bonus for getting a kill if you’ve stayed at a point for a period of time, and an outright point gain, getting points for actually defending objectives—ergo, points gained before that spawn rusher comes back from his last beatdown(so you continue to get points from him). Defense points would have to be set up in a way as to make it commensurate with attack points.

I do find it odd that no dueling exists, not even as an “arena” located in the Hearts of Mist.

That said, I’ve found that the best way to learn a class in this game, at least from a PvP perspective, is to make the class and play a few rounds. You not only see how you’ll work at max level in max gear, but you’ll also see the things that give you a ton of trouble.

I’ll use the Elementalist, not my normal class but one that I play often enough, as an example. With a “tanky” water based build, I’m tough as nails, one of the toughest players in the battlegrounds. My total damage is shockingly low, though, and when I die it is often to attrition—I just can’t seem to kill the bad guys fast enough to keep myself alive, though I certainly can stay alive really well.

Flip my spec around and go hard DPS, and I can make some solid numbers. Not great numbers, but killable numbers. If somebody notices me, I’m pretty much toast.

I also learn that if I want to beat them, spike damage and condition removals will be invaluable. Interrupting them when they are in earth form, especially casting earthquake can save your hide and severely shut down the elementalist. Forcing them out of water and earth, and into other elements are good opportunities to bring them down.

Is it a perfect snapshot of the elementalist? Maybe, maybe not. But it helps a person learn the class from the perspective they have of it—-and when someone overcomes one of these observations, you learn a ton from that too because you notice it.

I think the dirty little secret isn’t that it’s “too small” to form an “e-sport”

It’s that of those that do sPvP, the number of folks that actually give a rip about it becoming an “e-sport” is very small. The bulk just want to log in to their no-subscription MMO and rip out a handful of PvP matches. We aren’t interested in EVER “going pro” and sure as heck don’t care about ever involving into something with spectators or observers.

The simple reality is that a game can’t be designed with an “Imma make this a sport” attitude. Instead, you make a really, really great PvP game and it EVOLVES into one that the players and interested parties take to the next level. It happens fast for some, less fast for others, but the most development concern that really ought to be exerted for it is the implementation of content that has the intent of “competitive play”. If and when you hit that magic button, it catches on and THEN you implement the e-sport aspects.

Right now, we’ve got a free tournament mode for “competitive” play that doesn’t foster competitive play because premades farm pugs in it, a paid mode that costs too much to bother with when you aren’t forming teams because of the state of the free, and an sPvP mode that doesn’t have the tools or variety to make anyone who is currently not interested graduate to the next level.

Don’t take this as me not liking PvP in this game…I love it it a beer and pretzels game sort of way. There just isn’t any “competitive, win a ladder” type motivation vibe coming from it.

I think a good solution, all told, would be to make mesmer portal exits visible and destructible. This would make them invaluable if placed cleverly, but an easily destroyed sitting duck target if you just plop it down on top of the wall that your team more or less suicided its way onto for the express purpose of placing that portal.

Compared to the other ways of getting exotic gear, badges are probably the slowest. It should be tuned a bit if you ask me.

Outside of finding something that isn’t nearly as clunky a system as having to physically loot at a time that is completely unintuitive, I agree with this as a key factor when I look at the badges.

I see nothing wrong with currencies representing some level of time expenditure, but WvW gear is not better than the stuff that you can spend a gold and a half, or less, on. If we compare the amount of time it takes to get these badges(and this really seems like the most intuitive comparison a person will make) with the time it takes to accrue money, the difference is frighteningly lopsided.

As far as legendaries go, I don’t think this hurts a thing. If a person enjoys WvW they will readily and easily get this portion of their creation done. If the PvP aspects of the game are not something a person finds desirable, it’ll still take them some effort—and it’ll be mercifully shorter on them.

rickshaw.5279:

Thrym.9436:

To not be able to understand where a nerf comes from is a level of self delusion that I simply cannot fathom.

This thread has nothing to do with “nerfs” or “buffs” for that matter; I’m neither questioning nor criticizing either case. In fact I have no idea what “nerf” you’re even eluding to. So… with that in mind… actually read the OP, understand it, then feel free to rethink your post.

You’re so far in left field I’m actually embarrassed for you.

Don’t be too embarassed for me, I probably misinterpreted your purpose based upon the whining tone and twisted misinformation contained therein. I’m ok with being wrong in those circumstances.

The rest of the thread contents……….yeah. There is plenty to talk about when it comes to warriors, and nearly none of it is here.

rickshaw.5279:

Whether it’s a warrior stunning > 100b, a guardian CC’ing you to death, a mesmer shatter nuking, a D/D ele putting the kaibash on you ever having control of your character or an Engi KD>root trolling you into oblivion… it’s the same difference.

“It’s a matter of skill. It takes no skill to play a thief.”

Last I checked thieves have the same number of ability slots as everyone else. And last time I played my warrior and guardian it took the same amount of key strokes to down my opponents. The only difference being my Guardian takes 7 seconds to kill someone as they’re forced to watch helplessly as I smash them to bits and my Axe/Axe warrior obliterates opponents so fast that sometimes I confuse even myself as to what’s going on.

You’re on a level of self delusion I simply cannot fathom.

To not be able to understand where a nerf comes from is a level of self delusion that I simply cannot fathom.

EVERY person can roll another class, we all get to see these things. People roll thieves when they see them in action, and it blows a persons mind how easy the class is to play. If I where to rate it against play experience, I would say that it is the most faceroll easy character I’ve played since……Duke Nukem. It is the most mindlessly easy class to succeed on that I’ve ever experienced in any MMO, ever, and I’ve been around since the very beginning.

It’s not that thieves don’t have other ability keys or buttons, it’s that they don’t need to use them, and frankly can’t use them with the backstab build because either your opponent is dead or you are long before there is any consideration for the other buttons on your bar. Even 100b warrior takes more skill to land the same amount of damage as a thief backstab, and that’s saying alot.

You aren’t entirely wrong, though. Developers stated that they are “looking at burst damage”, and while only a fool would think that thief isn’t on that list, it realistically includes others, too. I’d look for the axe adrenaline attack and perhaps even 100b(though a person is a kitten if they actually eat a full 100b, even if they do get stunned/immobilized before it) to see a reduction.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the sharks go away entirely. They just don’t add anything to the map.

The way it plays out, you either win the point in the beginning and hold it the lions share of the map, or you don’t. Sharks act as supplemental guards, no more, no less. For the underwater node, they do nothing but cause the team owning the map to outnumber the other team, albeit with (usually) less skilled AI allies.

An interesting twist might be to keep them hostile to everyone, then the point becomes harder to defend AND capture.

Honestly, I think the arguments against 8vs8 are a whole lot of hooey.

The maps aren’t designed for it? Really? No map has a point on it that can be hit from another point. There is a run through empty terrain to every single point of interest in the maps. There is plenty of room for eight people. Realistically, there is room for more than that.

The fight points are all smaller places with a more or less open area and various LOS and chokepoint type situations. There is room for the whole team on any one of them.

The bigger problem is the scoring system. Holding points for a period of time doesn’t win matches they way being there when kills happen does, and it’s even worse for your personal statistics. The lack of strategy necessary forces the entire team to congregate in ways that make any crowding a person might feel be greatly exacerbated.

As far as a more practical “why”, I think the hotjoin dynamic needs it. Running 8 vs 7 for a few minutes or even a whole match isn’t nearly as detrimental as running 5 vs 4. The slightly higher body count means that people coming and going don’t destroy it the way they would with a smaller number.

The only way to make it end and be balanced is to…..well, make it end and be balanced.

Look at WoW arena before players accrued a “personal rating”, and even somewhat after. Gladiators with top tier equipment where constantly remaking teams, either just for the fun of it or to carry a person or two up to that level to also get that equipment.

This meant a nonstop of of getting pounded in the tailpipe by people you simply weren’t going to beat. Heck, just fooling around in there with a duo with my wife, we fought gladiators as low as 900 rating(that’s a few hundred points behind “wow, you guys are really bad”, btw).

If the top tiers, more coordinated, and better players are segregated, their matches become more even and so do everyone elses.

The only caveat I would add is that a bone ought to be tossed to these folks for getting there, statue of the current top rated team in Heart of Mists, fancy weapon skins, etc. Without this there isn’t much incentive for them to stay at the top once they get there.

Nyth.3492:

I can see why it is the strongest, or one of the strongest out there. But if you view it in perspective there is a lot of unjustified whining out there as well.

1) While Mist Form technically resets health, you actually get downed penalty each time you use it. Mist Form away and you start with 50% HP and you health goes down much faster.
The OP makes it seem like MF is a surefire way to indefinitely keep in the fight, this is bull.

2) The OP assumes that in every other situation you always have access to a stability, teleport and/or 2 people for a stomp. In any case where you don’t the ele downed is actually not as powerful as the others.
As ele I have a 100% chance to avoid the first stomp. But if the opponent doesn’t have stability or a teleport, I can avoid getting stomped a lot more and a lot longer on many other classes.
Note that the cooldown on Vapor Form has been changed to 20 seconds, meaning that with the extra downed penalty (point #1) you won’t be able to use it a second time unless you can heal yourself up.

In the end though I agree that for tPvP this ability is on the ‘too strong’-side. Especially the fact you can force people away from a point is imo too strong.
But you really have to get some misconceptions and false assumptions out of the way if you want a fair debate over what to do with it. Even in tPvP you don’t always have access to stability for stomping or have 2 players around to stomp or a teleport, and in those cases the ele downed state is hardly the strongest.

This person gets it. Elementalist adding a stack of “downed state” every time they go back down removes a fair portion of their health—more health than you could have taken from them by attacking them if you force them to mist immediately on down, in fact.

If you’re fixated on the kill, or if there are two of you(pretty much the exact same situation as every single other class in the game), you’ll get the stomp immediately after the elementalist uses mist.

1 vs 1, the mist makes for a pretty strong downed state because #3 comes up pretty quickly and does good damage, and mist all but guarantees you’ll get to use it. If you’ve got anyone that decides to continue standing next to you, though, it’s game over just as it should be.

wolfie.7296:

players just won’t play if they start this

That’s ok.

If there is no reason to play because the matchmaking system sucks and you don’t want to waste your valuable time on no-chance matches, then there is no reason to queue for them in the first place, then turn around and waste other peoples valuable time either.

If the entire system collapses because of this, it either gets abandoned, fixed, or rebuilt from scratch. Everybody that matters wins when quitters get punished.

DAOC was a great example of how AOE can work without a cap………..and it proves that having a cap is invaluable.

You didn’t have to be smarter. You didn’t have to play better and you weren’t more skilled than your opponent. You where in ventrillo(or teamspeak, people still used it in the way back machine).

Some guy played a healer that had an AE stun. A couple, maybe more guys played spiritmasters, and maybe you had a couple of warriors with guard on them(guard would block for the recipient of the buff).

Healer ran in room, dropped the AE stun, Spiritmasters PBAOE’d the whole room down so fast that everyone was dead before the first person could even whine about it(I played shaman, the other integral class to tag along for this ride, and there where times we’d snag 50 kills before the animation on my disease finished).

The days of games balancing to make this possible are over, and good riddance.

Leaving balance to the players is not a good idea. It hasn’t worked in any game in history until the population atrophy has reached a point in which any “casual” player aspect is long gone. I think it’d be hard to disagree with the idea that this game needs casual gamers to stay rolling.

Loyalty rewards would be fine, provided we all started on even footing, which we are not on. I just transferred off Eredon Terrace, which is heading towards its third straight week(fourth? I dunno) of nearly complete irrelevance in WvW. The server has degenerated to the point that we couldn’t keep ANYTHING on the first day(I think we had one tower when I transferred) AND didn’t even have Arah open on the PvE front—-that’s the effect that free transfers had on the server. Sticking around there isn’t fun, and it certainly isn’t going to earn anyone any kind of win rewards.

I have no idea how my enemies are dressed. Not in sPvP, not in WvW. As in, seriously, I just don’t look at their clothes and don’t care to. It has never crossed my mind that I ever might have trouble distinguishing friend from foe because the nameplates are far more obvious than any clothing.

It does annoy me to no end, though, that I look like a heavy gunner from Team Fortress 2. All the PvP skin rewards suddenly become worthless when you step into a match because the dye just ruins them. Yes, I realize they already don’t have any performance value, but the sole award taken away from matches is the ability to tweak your aesthetics……..for future matches, where it doesn’t make any difference.

If observers/commentators need something, toss flags or colored cloaks or colored auras/globes, etc on players in observer/commentator view—but seriously, they aren’t going to be commenting on random sPvP games anyway, if this is an actual reason it could easily be limited to paid tournaments.

I have to agree. I transferred today(no, I didn’t bring a boatload of guildies with me) for the simple reason that yesterday I was on a server that didn’t hold a single tower in WvW and hadn’t in that round…….when log in time came today, we where already getting flat out stomped(score was 5000/1500/500, with us at the low end) and was progressively getting worse.

I felt a little bad giving up on the underdog, but simply put, I don’t want to play that way. When population is that unbalanced, it’s not a matter of harder fights or ekeing out a place, it’s a simple matter of “we run around taking points and killing Dolyaks while they tromp all the keeps and towers, steamrolling our little group at their leisure”……which then degenerates into “I wonder if I can even get out of the portal keep today”.

So I switched to a server that actually has a population. I finished my monthly, and proceeded to quadruple my total WvW kill count in about two hours.

Small servers will have to be merged, and further transfer will have to be paid for in order to even this out, in my opinion.

Guys that don’t like this are the same people who ruined endzone shenanigans in the NFL.

Nah, not really like that at all.

By all means, celebrate it up when you score the equivalent of a touchdown, or an interception, or even a fumble recovery.

But when you’re the guard that lands the late hit on the guy that just mutilated the team MVP quarterback you where supposed to be blocking for(and it is amazing how often this is when it happens)….eh, it just makes you look like the village idiot.

The thief here will continue to be reviled by nearly everyone not defending them for the same reason the thief/rogue/assassin is in every game. It’s an alpha strike character with significant escape mechanisms.

In order for the class to be balanced, its damage after alpha strike must be low enough so that average DPS over a fight averages out to what another player puts out. Any higher than this and the alpha is too large, any lower and thieves will be inadequate. At current, total DPS+alpha does not match this, and overall I believe it’s because it’s too easy to apply it in comparison to applying that DPS with another class.

A thief class has a tendency(and it’s the case here too) to survive not on ability to take advantage of effective health, rather, it utilizes escape mechanisms to avoid the damage that others soak. Survivability is much closer to balanced than damage, but on the whole it is still more useful than a commensurate amount of toughness/healing/vitality on another class.

Some of this isn’t entirely the fault of the thief. Far, far too many classes and specs have their damage application placed extremely unevenly across their abilities(Warrior greatsword is a good example). Against this large number of classes, anything that can escape that singular ability, whatever it may be, is worth far more than it’s estimated value in additional health could ever equate to.

Frankly, A more even damage application across the board on all classes would probably hurt thieves as much as any specific nerf to their class would because they’d suddenly be eating bigger attacks, even after avoiding the 100blades and whatnot.

Anecdotal, of course, but volunteering to be on the losing team seems to have absolutely no bearing on whether or not I’m selected to be moved to it. In fact, (again, entirely anecdotal because it just “feels” this way) I seem more likely to get swapped if I take my chances.

So yes, this means I volunteer every time and no, it’s not really because I actually want to go.

Yes, you keep your points earned up until that point, including anything gained from “most kill” and other post-match rewards. You do not get the victory points you’d have gained on the winning team but you do get a volunteer pittance regardless of whether or not you are selected.

I’ve also noticed that I have a stronger tendency of being switched if I’m at the top of the board than the bottom, and that’s probably a good thing. The system is designed to try to keep the teams balanced, not put all the schleps on the same team(and yes, I realize that it sometimes fails grandly at this).

Honestly, I think it’s a good system, even when it doesn’t favor me. If I wanted something that locked me into a lopsided matchup on the winning team every time, I’d hook up with a PvP crew and run premade(nothing at all wrong with this, mind, it just isn’t what spvp is about). Pickup matches need stuff like this.

I’m not on the subject, just adding my two bits. The OP was asking about burst damage, and I mentioned that it exists in this form.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Down system is fine, you just need to get used to it. I lol so hard when people say that the downed state of the thief is good. Thief and Mesmer downed state are nothing special if you have a clue about what they do and what “aoe” means.

Warrior, Necromancer and Guardian have really strong down state, but even they have their down sides. Learn to adapt to them and it won’t be a big deal.

Haha, not even remotely close to true, the down state system is not fine.

Thief and Mesmer downstates leave great opportunities to greatly delay the enemy or even get yourself up or hidden until you have to be abandoned, at which point you get up. People rarely even bother trying to stomp them because of the futility of it. These classes can easily delay long enough to nail their #3 ability.

Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger and Guardian are relatively more balanced. They aren’t going anywhere, and aside from their single interupt style ability they just don’t have a whole lot of chance. They pretty much have to be neglected to make it to their #3.

The elementalist downed state is flagrantly underpowered and laughable, the engineer isn’t much better. Once down they’re dead. You can stomp them with relative impunity and virtually no delay.

It’s not a matter of “getting used” to anything, some of them just plain work better than others and that’s pretty much the definition of imbalance.

I’ve been dropped tonight before being able to get block to trigger on at least two occasions by backstab thieves. Yes, this is a team game and you should be able to rely on your teammates, but when you leave the 28k health shield warrior to defend a node, burst is a bit high when he loses it before he’s even delayed the enemy, right?

Running a shield with 30 defense and 28k health. It really doesn’t get a whole lot more “tanky” than that.

That, by definition, is burst, and it is a problematic amount of it.

You won’t run into it from many classes or specs, though, burst isn’t coming from everyone. Standing in a full barrage is bad, but hardly unavoidable. Eating a warrior greatsword is an outright mistake by anyone that actually lets themselves eat the whole thing. Backstab is about the only attack that directly frontloads in amounts that decide a fight in the opening button press, as far as damage goes(heartseeker can finish it, but the thief does have to get you to that point).

I would like to see more maps with more strategic items, but the basic concepts and framework seem pretty sound.

In particular, everyone having access to the same gear and level is huge. No level advantage, no gear advantage. These things have always been garbage, whether it be a crutch for less skilled players or an even greater imbalance toward more skilled players, outgearing opponents is simply not fun.

I’m enjoying it so far, but I do have to agree that the maps themselves will get stale without some kind of mixing it up.

I tried hammer and went away from it to a shield because hammer gets schooled by anyone who bothers to keep tools to maintain their mobility—which is anyone that would rather win than make excuses. If I had a preset group that needed a controller, I might consider the hammer but it just doesn’t put down the hurt to keep your health from running down before any enemy capable of kiting or significant mitigation.

Mesmers, by comparison, are a hard win. Unless you’re piercing to hit them or 1-2 shotting their illusions, the good ones manage to hide behind a wall of meatshield illusions until you’re just plain out of tricks. Still winnable, but significantly more powerful than a hammer warrior.

Thieves have their damage grotesquely skewed into one ability per spec, and if it gets frontloaded you’re in alot of trouble. Review your damage taken log after a death to a thief and you’ll find significant raw damage from a single ability, be it a backstab or heartseeker. They’d still be dangerous, but significantly more manageable, if they had more to handle than making sure they land that button.

I love player housing, and look forward to getting a house.

Ultima Online had “freeform” ability to place houses. It was awful and should never be repeated.

Dark Age of Camelot had the most awesome housing(houses where all in the same zone, seperate from other zones) in any game I’ve ever seen, but the ability to put the merchants on and in them destroyed the major cities, which ruined community centers and was a mistake.

EQ2 had great housing. It was instanced, customizable almost on par with DAOC, and didn’t seem to take away from the game. In my opinion, this is the best model to emulate for player housing.

You can create a character at level one, go to heart of mists, and play it as a level 80 with everything unlocked as much as you want right now. You can do WvW the same way, albeit without the points(and yes, I am aware that it’ll be painful) and that will even level you as you do it.

If you want the PvE, you play the PvE. Even if Pay to Win wasn’t a bad idea(and it is), being allowed to skip the PvE in order to, um..PvE, would continue to be a bad idea.

1. I’m a little surprised at all the “no” action at the suggestion of eliminating invulnerable monsters.

Gaining a tactical advantage should be a good thing. It breeds smarter players that aren’t face-smashing every single enemy.

On top of this, the mechanic is outright broken. I’ve had mobs go invulnerable in melee range while taking damage. I’ve heal tanked mobs with pets because they where invulnerable to me but not the pet. I’ve died several times because I simply couldn’t get out of the water fast enough and couldn’t damage the mobs for some ungodly reason.

If anti-kite is needed(and surely it is), then make mobs smarter, or give them abilities to prevent it. Have them move out of range, or give them a cripple, or a charge, or a pull, or a big heal triggered after being kited for a period, etc, etc.

Of course, simply fixing the invulnerability mechanic would make sense too. If it worked correctly, it’d literally be invisible for most players but would still prevent exploits.

2. Teleport fees are too high at max level. I do think they should probably exist, but they are not proportional to what they should be. As an example, my level 26 ranger pays the equivalent of one blue item to make a port. My level 80 warrior pays the equivalent of three green items based upon their vendor price. Gold sinks are necessary, but should never be prohibitive.

3. Dynamic leveling is usually ok, in my opinion, but as the poster above me mentions, it’s wonky sometimes. In the 55-65 and 60-70 areas(Steamspur Mountains), for example, mobs have drastic level difference directly on other sides of the dynamic borders, but their aggro range actually extends into the lower areas, which can leave you grossly over or underpowered compared to opposition that you aren’t actively looking for. I don’t agree with giving us power advantages through this system, however, and appreciate being able to visit lower zones and still more or less play the content.

4. Fixing broken events in any form is a bug fix, not really a cause for game mechanic changes. Timers would be a crude, but effective, way to band aid this, though.

5. I don’t think increasing mob level is really the answer, but a better difficulty ramp up based upon participating players might be nice. If one person is on at 3am, why not make it soloable? If one hundred are there at 7pm, why not have them face armies?

6. Trait points, in my opinion, are one gold sink that is done right. It is not too expensive to do, but it’s not free or available everywhere either so a person must actually prepare themselves for the goal at hand.

7. As has been mentioned, a bug fix. Would love to see these fixes moving on a faster timetable.

8. Agree with fading the camera. No, “part of the challenge” is not overcoming clunky game mechanics or picking the right race to not have problems. A well polished game leaves puzzles to player skill and intelligence, not their ability to overcome a lack of polish.