Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand this decision. I read the message from Chris Whiteside 3 times, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. And here’s the line that got me:

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two.

Those two sentences are what don’t make sense. Right now, there is no jump in reward between exotics and legendaries. They have the same stats, it’s just that the legendaries look more impressive. The only way there would be a jump in reward is if you increased the stats on legendaries, which goes against your stated design philosophy for those legendary items in the first place.

Why are these ascended items necessary? What purpose do they serve? Are you making these available because our current stats in full exotic gear are too low, and you need to increase them for balance purposes? If so, then why not just…increase the stats on exotic gear?

Are you making these available for your Infusion mechanic (Which, from what I’ve been told is a holdover from GW1)? If so, then why not just…add infusion slots to exotic gear?

I’ve tried to come up with a logical explanation as to why this Ascended gear is necessary, and I’m only able to come up with one: Because you, as a company, now believe that Verticle Gear Progression is necessary for the long term survival of Guild Wars 2, and the Ascended gear is the beginning of your Verticle Gear Progression. No other explanation I can come up with makes sense. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’m not clever enough to come up with the real reason, but if that’s the case, please, by all means, correct me.

Because otherwise, I’m done with this game. I’ve played the Tiered Gear Progression game before, and I’ve stopped playing MMOs with that sort of gear progression precisely because I hated what it did to those games. And I’m not saying that as someone who played at a low point in that gear progression, I’m saying that as someone who was, at the time, the hardest of the hardcore, leading high end raiding guilds into dungeons for an amount of time every week that essentially amounted to a second full time job.

Guild Wars 2 was a huge breath of fresh air. I loved the feeling of getting my first level 80 a full set of exotic gear with all the runes and sigils I needed, and then going skin hunting to get that character looking exactly the way I wanted. I liked the thought that no matter what content came along, I was ready for it, and I wouldn’t need any new gear, but I might be interested in new weapon or armor skins that come along to improve the look of my character. I loved that my only reason for doing anything in the game was that I wanted to do it, and not that I felt that I needed to do it so that I can be certain that I’ll be able to do any new content that comes along. I loved that no one ever had to ask me what my gear was like in order to determine if I’d be a good addition to their group, because everyone was wearing the same level of gear.

And most importantly of all…I loved that I could create alt characters without feeling like my original, main character was falling behind in any way.

But no more.

And with that, the feeling of the game has suddenly changed. When I login to Guild Wars 2 after this announcement, I don’t feel free, I don’t feel like I’ll be able to do anything I want in the game anymore. Instead, I feel constrained, and unhappy. The life, and fun, has been sucked out of the game with the mere announcement of a new tier of gear.

Please, I beg of you ArenaNet, please reconsider this change. I’ve spent a lot of money on this game so far, happily, without regret, because I supported what you were doing, and the philosophy behind your game and its design. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do that any longer if you go forward with this.

Vargs.6234:

I’m mainly specced for backstab, stealth, and blinds but that stuff tends to feel unnecessary. Most of my melee kills in WvW come from heartseeker spam since 90% of the time whoever you’re attacking will do literally nothing about it whatsoever except maybe hit you with a few basic attacks, or make a really halfhearted attempt at jogging away. If I get super unlucky they may use a single cripple and then start slowly, sloooowly backpedalling (or just stand there).

That’s just most players being terrible right now. We can only hope that will change as people play more.

Freya Valentin.1839:

It can be use full .
But that these skill are also found in the world and are random..
It just doesn’t feel special

When I played in beta I felt the exact same way. However, you’ll start to recognize the abilities you’re getting and how they’re used, and that’s when it’ll start to make sense to you. Keep using steal. It’s a shadowstep and a free ability that is never useless. Once you learn to recognize what abilities do what, you’ll start to realize how good steal is.

It grows on you. It just takes some time and a little effort. Keep at it.

Fateless.6985:

Viladel.1837:

Fateless.6985:

I would like to just make a quick mention for people giving solutions of applying CC to the thief. I never even mentioned thief utility. I was only referring to heartseeker.

If you want to get technical with slowing them/stunning, whatever CC you wish.

They have stealth, shadowsteps, dazes, stuns, poisons. Everything you do to stop them, they’ll catch right up.

And your class does not have a full set of abilities to help deal with this as well?

Not when I used all my CD’s/endurance to survive the initial seven heartseekers.

See, you’re taking things out of order. Let’s say you encounter a thief who starts using Heartseeker spam. You use a cripple to slow him down, making his heartseeker almost completely uneffective, and start kiting him.

He then uses a shadowstep to get to you. So you used a cooldown, now he used a cooldown. It’s your move, you have to do something else to get away from him, whether that’s simply rolling away (He’s still crippled, remember), or some other ability that lets you escape from his grasp.

Chances are the Thief will have two Shadowsteps at most. One from Steal, which is going to be about a 36 second cooldown if they have Preparedness (If they’re Heartseeker spamming, they do), and the other coming from either a Signet or the actual Shadowstep utility power. Not all thieves will take the utility powers, and most thieves will not take both utility powers. So you’ll have to get past 1-2 Shadowsteps.

As for Stuns and Dazes, Thieves don’t actually have much in terms of those. Pistol offhand comes with a 0.25 second interrupt, and if we get lucky, we can (randomly) steal a 3 second daze depending on the class we’re facing, but I can’t recall any stuns or dazes other than those that aren’t based on specific traits that the Heartseeker thief definitely won’t have. There is the Pistol Whip from Sword/Pistol, but if you’re up against that, you’re not up against Heartseeker.

There are poisons, and you’ll have to watch out for those. The two of concern are going to be the Chill and Immobilize poisons. Both are short duration though, and again, not every thief will have them, and most won’t have both. The other thing you have to watch out for is the Knife throw for ranged cripple if they are Dagger/Dagger, but that spends 4 Initiative, which means less Heartseeker spam.

There are ways around these. If a Thief is going to throw abilities at you to stay on top of you, then you’ll have to throw abilities back. That’s how the game works. If you’re not willing to use that first SINGLE ability to cripple the Thief, then you’re going to eat all seven Heartseekers. If you do use that ability, then it comes down to who can outplay the other, and in that case all the Heartseeker spam did was weed out the unskilled players unwilling to really try.

Fateless.6985:

I would like to just make a quick mention for people giving solutions of applying CC to the thief. I never even mentioned thief utility. I was only referring to heartseeker.

If you want to get technical with slowing them/stunning, whatever CC you wish.

They have stealth, shadowsteps, dazes, stuns, poisons. Everything you do to stop them, they’ll catch right up.

And your class does not have a full set of abilities to help deal with this as well?

Candiru.5279:

Increase Intitative and decrease range and heartseeker is balanced again

Not sure about the initiative, but you can decrease the range on your own. Cripple the thief.

Seriously, decrease his movement speed. Doing that decreases the range of heartseeker. Then kite him. The thief blows heartseekers on trying to get to you, goes like 2 feet with every one, blows all his initiative, has no health, no toughness, nothing left. So then just kill him straight up.

Well written, and a good approach to thinking about builds. I hope we start seeing guides like this for every profession.