Guild Wars 2

So, this well is considered to be one of the least useful ones out there. It’s The only utility one that doesn’t deal any dmg, inflict any condition, has a moderately high CD and provides a questionable defensive buff. The aegis is only useful when fighting one target in PVE, more than one and it’s no better than blind (or one that attacks too fast or ticks too quickly). It does give you some endurance though, but needing to stand on it the whole duration makes it questionable given the need to not dodge out of the well.

This utility suffers from the annoying part of being a stunbreaker channel which means it can be cancelled and it does not reset the cooldown. If you happen to need to cancel it or pop out a priority move like a heal then it will go down to its LONG cooldown.
Given its naturally long cooldown it’s terrible for alacrity fodder and to top it all, it has what feels to be the longest animation for an aegis-applying skill. Usually aegis is used to block attacks in a timely manner and given it’s short-ish duration it makes no sense for the well to have such a long cast time.

All in all, this well feels underwhelming and clunky to use. Ironically, it’s all because of bad tuning, it’s all tuned for its previous version of giving everybody evasion.

I believe this version could use a few improvements:
- No cast time and being able to cast timely (like feedback)
Like most other stunbreakers, it doesn’t need one, it breaks the skill completely.
- Lower cooldown
Other wells generally don’t have a terribly long cooldown for a small effect, it should be at least 25s.
-Pulse for every half a second as opposed to one per second
Because it simply can’t block much or anything when there’s more than one target.

So, after saving up for this expensive thing…. I got extremely disappointed. For most if not all races, it colors you white, which would fit my current dyes and colors. For charr though, it colors you blue, a VERY deep blue. It has a very similar color to the zodiac armor and it looks very off and not winterish at all.
Why is it that it looks so bad on charr? >:

zealex.9410:

not an rper but id imagine that opening the hero panel for it would be immersion and rp breaking right?

It’s like hearing a cellphone in the middle of the movie, it interrupts the flow and suddenly your focus shifts off

Anybody out there knows a macro or command that can help with this?
Basically what I am looking for is a shortcut to disable and enable helmet (visual only, not equip) mostly for roleplay purposes.

I want to be able to take off the helmet off battle and put it on once in battle again but without the hassle of having to go to the menu everytime and do the whole dance to get it off and on.

FrostDraco.8306:

That’s the point of gold fractal skins. They are supposed to be prestige RNG items. You can craft them in the mystic forge if you want them all THAT bad.

I’ve been playing fractals since their release. I can’t be bothered by gold fractal skins since they look ugly and I really wish they didn’t make normal ones so common. That said, it’s very, very sad that they make it so it’s more likely to win the lottery than to get a virtual skins.

I’ve been doing fractals ever since they’ve come out. I tried to complete the whole normal collection when it was a thing but my luck has NEVER been good. For this set.. well… There is indeed a recipe for it but my luck is pretty bad so I rarely get skins….however….
It turns out, I’ve only gotten 4 gold fractal weapon skins and those 4 have been…. only golden fractal greatswords!

Now, we’ve got 19 different weapon skins from fractals.
So the chance of getting the same one consecutively is just 1/19×2. For 4…however….
It’s 1/130321!!

Anet please! I got more chances to win the lottery than that!
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/270600779936219205/4F26E247527FA606C9716D3E5ACF1E6E3FA28DDA/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/270600779936219040/4AD75AF5146B8BB989D421CEA4ED5C5EF5A9FC48/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/270600779936218889/000C54D9FD6F93377092CFA0CFAC5B26F5222A81/
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/270600779936218595/D4B0956FE228A3B9E4D60C1B0CC10BBDE2534661/

Ps. The fractal sword I got only from completing the previous collection

Why hasn’t anet implemented the pseudo random system yet? True random just guarantess a % of your population is getting screwed 100% of the time!

For those people who often have buddies to party with or are lucky enough to find a good party, it goes just fine. People know how to dodge, the mechanics, don’t avoid the wisp running phase, etc. It turns out to be an encounter like any other except you have to be on your toes and not get hit.

For the others who are not as lucky…
For me at least, I have no problem soloing any other fractal boss, but this one, I can’t. If the party wipes then it simply resulted in a glorified chase to get OOC. Now that that has been patched then it’s just go die and watch the party wipe again for a long encounter.
So in most parties it just ends up being a gamble of getting competent people in the party finder, otherwise it’s pretty much not going to happen and is going to be a time sink. This just encourages me to only play with certain people and actually discourages the use of LFG for this single encounter.

That is actually not a bad thing in the general aspect, seeing how there is some content that is made for certain people, however, it should have it’s own place to be. Fractals used to be very PUG friendly but it’s slowly drifting away from that. So in conclusion, the swamp fractal is simply NOT tuned for your average pug; again, it’s not a bad thing but as it stands now it’s a very weird and awkward difficulty spike that is turning people off because in general, people don’t like difficulty spikes.

I tried digging into the patch notes to see if I could find it but I can’t.
Apparently the trait “Inscription” doesn’t lower the cooldown of this glyph. As far as I remember it did and it was on a 20 second cooldown but it does not.
I tested it out and only the heal glyph is the one not affected, other glyphs are just fine. Was this a change a while ago? Is it a bug?

As much as I would prefer rifle, I would love staff if it played almost exactly like spear does, like a land version of it.

Think about it, an on demand block, a reliable evade (that would probably have a very cool martial art animation to boot) and a strong AA.

However #2 is like the old flanking strike and tends to miss so I’d rather have a short showdstep on to the target’s back instead of the evade.

And #4 self stuns so I’d rather have what Revs do or just something compeltely different.

The stealth attack could have CC or other utility.

Just the block and instant evade are amazing on their own and would help with the suck balls defence that thieves have now.

I’ve done fractals back to back for as long as they’ve been out. While I don’t have all skins and I get plenty of dupes, I still have gotten most I’ve wanted.
Admittedly, the drop %’s are insanely low which makes for very frustrating seasons.
Also, fractal tonic is a lie.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Dont you dare join the words “reset” and “fractal levels” together.

I think The Reset was enough trauma on its own caused by Anet itself. Having an option to self-inflict reset on fractal level just adds salt upon injury

While it has some moral dilema on the back of it. The idea itself feels pretty smooth to me (ignoring the fractured update).
If a simple tokken system were to be added people would still only play high tier fractals. If it’s any better it could show how many times you’ve resetted (like CoD ranks work?).

PS Do fractal drops feel bugged to you, haven’t gotten anything but rings as of late (post update)

As we all know RNG drops are extremely unfair and unsatisfactory. Fractal percentages are so meager than even when getting the desired drop feels bitter and sad.
After the fractured fiasco people were quite upset, particularly with the limitation of levels, the unjustified reset, the undelivered promises and the drop in rewards.

I am a frequent fractal runner and know all bosses pattersn by memory and in reverse so it has become extremely easy. I’ve gathered myself a few weapons but obviously, not the ones I desire. I also get plenty of duplicates and often see my friends who run eeeevery now and then get the coolest weapons and are able to show them off as a symbol of their effort. There are seasons where nothing drops, like all this month, not even a trash box and just meager rings and shamefully, RNG doesn’t compensate and drops don’t feel any generous later.

Justifications aside, people are upset about RNG and that being a frequenter means close to nothing. There are other problems with the RNG method and it’s that people only do the tiers with most chances so 30+ fractals are surrounded by veterans while 29 below have less crafty players all around (in general). There’s no reason for people to do a 1-10 fractal once they are personal level 50 for example which divides the community slightly and indirectly.

Solution

What I’ve thought is giving players the option to reset their own personal level back to 1, like call of duty ranks but in exchange they get a box, since they are so popular now. The box contains the option to choose from 1, 2 or all 3 (depending on balance) of a fractal weapon box, an ascended weapon box of choice and an armor box of choice.
After the reset of your level, you gain the levels again normally as you do fractals and at the end you have to do a lvl 50 to get the box again.

Many have noticed by now that the kick feature is flawed in practice due to the partiality of its system. As it stands right now it requires 40% of the party’s votes to pass a kick and in practice (and theory) that is a flawed concept. In practice it only requires one friend to pull down the lever which opens up more possibilities for harm than for good. To this date I’ve yet to see how the party kick feature has been helpful in anyway.

I am a frequent fractaler, I’ve amassed several skins, know all the mechanics back to back and have an 100% success rate on all of the runs EXCEPT for the ones I’ve been kicked. I’ve ran with players with less skill, others who go afk often, many who are clueless to mechanics and even then I carry the party through or even solo if needed without the need for a kick. The problem is, kicking has turned into a griefing mechanic instead of a amending one.
How is this? People don’t generally kick others because of their lack of skill unless they spend 90% of the fighting time dead or actively grief the party in some other way. People generally kick just because they don’t like something.

Here are some examples
I’ve been kicked for:
Suggesting a thief to use blinds
Advise people not to use melee on the grawl shaman when they keep dying to his melee nukes
Solo mai trin because a person wanted to have fun
Solo molten duo because I went ranged after the zerker was flooded with aoes (and thus wiped the rest)
For asking “what?” after being told shut your mouth.
And my favorite, to give a free reward to a guild member.

So what happens? The party turns into a toxic and untrusty group that is in constant fear of a kick; everybody has to kneel down and bow to the overlord and his “accept kick” buddy.

I generally don’t do much dungeons but when I do it’s even worse. People don’t think about it twice to kick a person. “Stacked on the wrong spot? Kick” “Didn’t die when all the party did? Must be cleric’s. Kick.” And that’s just giving some reasons for kicking, most of the time there is no reason at all.

If you give a person the ability to grief there will be people who will abuse of it. In the internet there is a lack of concern and empathy due to the anonimous nature of it so the others will rarely feel what the others have. This has to stop now. It’s growing more and more like kitten in the dungeon community and it’s starting to grow rotten fruit out of the tree like:
Don’t join any group with 2 of the same guild
Don’t speak, at all
Do all you’re told even if it’s bad advise
Look for a scapegoat other than yourself in every wipe
Only run with guildies (which is near impossible for high fractals)

It’s getting out of hand. Kicks should be done with only the absolute majority. Why? It ensures that if there’s ONE griefer then the party will agree to kick him/her. If the party fails to go through a certain stage then it’s the party’s fault, the added sum of their skill is not enough to get through.
This madness needs to stop. We should have a healthier community, not one that is holding their hot finger over the red button to ensure they click it first.

NinjaEd.3946:

Zephyric Reaper.3049:

long

Can you solo a boss? Yes, but its incredibly boring and for the sake of teaching those pugs a thing or 2, does absolutely nothing to benefit them. You’d honestly be better off dying or entering stealth to reset. I’d be more pleased seeing 4/5 of us take down a boss than have me carry them 50% of the boss’s health because I ran stealth regen which is rather selfish. If you ran other alternatives you can actually benefit the group and possibly yield better results.

Only time I run SA is for the group support via regen or venoms, I don’t do it to clutch and flex off for the pugs who went afk for a sandwich after getting tired of watching me. Even with pw I have aoe fury/swiftness and blinds going off, beats using d/x to spike 1 target down at a time imo.

It’s not like you start right off the bat soloing it or that your teammates die instantly.
I can’t tell you how many times have teammates died at the molten alliance duo when the boss is at 25% or less. Even as a guardian, trying to keep protection up and such they -still- die. I’ve have had guildies who get stuck for about an hour on the last boss; be it mai trin or molten alliance duo or any other fractal and when they have a drop out I offer my help and do it for them.
It may take a little longer to chip off the last bit of hp yourself BUT compared to the possible hour or actually not being able to complete the fractal at all, it’s worth it.

You can give him a very effective build but if his party is not making it through anyway then what’s it worth?
Actually giving the OP some knowledge of some survivable builds that are able to solo IF he needs, is important. ButI do agree that he should be going the most amount of damage if he has the chance as long as he’s not perma-downed.

NinjaEd.3946:

I’d actually recommend not using SA for anything but certain boss fights. You generally do not use stealth because

A) Only good stealth attacks are single target, and most encounters are groups
B) If you use stealth to skip trash mobs or position yourselves, SR does the job on its own
C) if you have to recover in stealth (shadows rejuvenation) you’re sitting around while your group carries you.

Only time you use SA is for:

-Volcanic fractal, during the part where veteran grawl spawn and run to the edge to knock a human off. Best thing I’ve done with thief is S/X venom share which requires SA.

-Volcanic fractal, during the boss I go 6 points in so if I need to heal someone the rejuvenation covers up the burning I get for sitting still.

-During Mai trin boss I go 4 points in since I use d/p for her for mobility and high single target dps. The condi clearing and regeneration to allies only though.

That’s really the only time I go into SA for anything, the rest is always critical strikes (6) and acrobatics (4-6) because it gives vitality which helps with our naturally low health pool and the “1 shot” mechanics that swarm higher level fractals with some other good traits like faster initiative regen for PW or power of inertia for extra dps.

Also X/p does a far better job of blinding than CnD + cloaked in shadows.

Problem is, that’s assuming that your group is competent and keeps themselves alive well enough AND you don’t have to solo. If he happens to NEED shadowrejuvenation then it doesn’t matter if he’s idling or not, without the trait he would be either dead or running away as he tries to not get hit or squeeze out regen out of elsewhere.
Usually running smokescreen with blind on stealth is enough blinds unless your party is really, really slow on killing dangerous vets such as ascalon’s and other vets like fanatics overwhelm you from all side to be able to be all hit by black powder. PW is only going to help on fractals in which any other weaponset would do. In fractals that have hard-er trash mobs such as molten alliance or ascalon, you’ll most likely get 1 shot regardless by the overwhelming number of mobs or range/charge. And since it has a horrible pre and aftercast, there is no good timing for it because there are way too many mobs to face. Of course, if you got a GOOD group that has a guardian doing protection rotations, might stacking, ect, then -anything- is viable for thief as long as you bring essentials and then you’ll be trying to aim for optimization.
Problem is when you have to carry the group and they all die often and such so you need to compensate. I find it terribly hard to solo molten alliance duo without extra regen, it’s way too easy to be caught by any random aoe and out of dodges, for example. 6 SA just gives you a huge coushin to lay back in case of mistakes, bad pugs and soloing; if you try to solo mobs by not getting hit by -anything- then it turns really stressing, particularly if you have ping/lag issues.
In the end, he can go with full damage and give or take some utility traits but truth is, there will be very bad pugs out there and if you can’t carry them then it’s better just to leave party altogether.

To OP: 6SA also gives some forgiving regen to learn mechanics and not be as squishy since while learnign you won’t know most mechanics, it’s likely you’ll get hit plenty. PW spam and signet of malice or PP as well could get you somewhere as well but they’re very team-dependant.

If you play wit ha (comptent) group then you probably will be able to get away with full damage any maybe 3-2 points in either SA or acro.
If you’re going to run pugs then you have a chance you’ll get brain-dead people. So you most likely need to “bring more to the table” because bad pugs usually: take forever to kill stuff, die a plenty, don’t bring meta builds/utility, don’t change weps/traits accordingly, they kill you (by luring mobs into you will stealthed or some sort).

For the first case, then you are good to go with about any and every weapon since most (except maybe P/D) have good-ish damage. Just be sure they you bring the essentials: blinds and stealth for the appropiatte encounters.

For the second…. I find it most helpful to run DD with 6 points in SA. Why? because then you can be a better nurse for the baddies and you can keep mobs blind locked with C&D, more room for mistakes and hits, ect. 6 on crit I’d say it’s pretty much mandatory, still, for damage.

Either way, if you encounter bad pugs and need to carry them I find guardian to be way more useful at that since it can solo fractals very easily (at least some of the troublesome bosses) and keeps the party alive for most time.

As a final tip: mango pies are your friend.

Aleth.9630:

Our L50 run just bugged out – after Underground Facility, we didn’t get ported into the next instance, and the party member who entered 1st got some kind of “Instance creation failed” message. We had to restart completely.

Also, is it just me noticing generally less responsive instances in fractals (eg. longer load times inbetween, a lot more disconnects, etc.)

That seems quite rare. Longer load times maybe but disconnects actually less than before for me.

OT: Thaumanova + golem fix.

Thaumanova
-Golems in the maze area now deal insane damage with their channelling spell.
-Upon defeating the boss it no longer teleports the players into the treasure room, thus there is no final chest in this fractal

Cliffside
-The first archdiviner hits an “invisible” attack with ring of warding prior to shooting the projectiles, causing this attack to be a potential 900 instagib (not like the boss already lacks those already)
-Upon activating the hammer AND triggering the 30 stack stun, the animation will happen but the seal won’t get damaged and the charge will be lost
-Finalboss archdiviner sometimes fails to be stunned upon hitting the seal (a player must stand next to him)

Grawl
-(rare) The shaman will stay on the starting area, making it incredibly hard to dispell his bubble
-Lava elementals may bypass reflection with their immobilizing projectile

Uncategorized
-Harpy aoe KB marker sometimes displays the wrong area and will often trigger when the player is ON the harpy’s feet should it be “triggered” before reaching said distance.
-Asuran boss’ projectiles may hit a player even after said player has dodged into the projectiles since they keep homing at the target and can do a 180° turn

Molten alliance
-earth elementals hit disproportionately with their earth spike (melee range, long stun with a mob that can cast reflect projectiles)
-Sometimes the map may indicate some objectives (rocks on steam) to be missing when they have already been done

Swamp
-Mossman doesn’t recieve revealed debuff upon attacking in stealth

All final bosses
-There is a certain spot that trigger a 10~ second agony tick which is close to the entrance of each area, invisible, not tells, and detrimental to the boss fight. (should change it for it to be exactly at the entrance)

Dredge
-There is a veteran dredge resonator with boss-like hp on the panel room

Molten duo
-Once the berserker enters his below 25% hp “phase” he summons a series of waves at the players. Upon releasing the final one and even if the player has jumped over all of them, there is an invisible one that hits if the player doesn’t attempt to jump it.

Purple Miku.7032:

Meleeing him is actually best in max melee range. It sucks you wasted your time but do you think anything can actually be done about this?

None of us know what happened there from any perspective other than the story you tell us. Even if we did, we still couldn’t do anything about it.

By the way… reporting doesn’t do anything. It’s pretty much as useful as it is to press the button on a traffic light when you’re a pedestrian that wants to cross. It’s just there to make people feel like they’re making it go faster when in reality, traffic lights won’t desynchronize themselves just to ease the mind of an impatient pedestrian… just like Arenanet won’t staff people to spend 24-7 dealing with ambiguous reports like this. :/

It is the best dps if all go melee and all have the sustain for that. If there’s a bit of both then it’s a waste. Not to mentio nthat you can get knocked into the lava if you’re caught in a bad position and combo’d into some of his abilities with the falling rocks. Regardless, it’s no motive for being so rude all of a sudden.
There is little story to the fractal anyway, bosses went pretty smooth for the most part; little talking, except him and his buddy were dying the most but that’s not really a problem as long as things get done.

I just wanted to give the context because it is a prime example of toxicity, abuse and ill behavior.

Before, when there was no kick option I had little trouble. Either the group had to get carried or people who have absolutely no courtesy/social manners or skills would leave by themselves. The only problem were DC’d people. Nowadays the kick option is more abused than anything else due to its nature. Some of my buddies even use it jokingly while using TS because of how easy it is to abuse it. A system that supports and encourages toxic behavior should not be tolerated.

Just now I was kicked from a fractal group at the third fractal. The first two were fine and dandy, no wipes nothing, and the third was just as good. Everybody did their job and everything was great.
At the third we were at the first phase of the shaman. Two guys proceeded to melee the shaman and as you know he spins, reflects, ect. I suggested not to melee him because you gain nothing out of it, it just made reflects for ranged and knockback+ dmg for melee.
I was then aggresively told “Shut your mouth” Out of nowhere. It was the first violent aggression in the whole fractal run. Then proceeded with the words “One more thing coming out of your mouth and I’ll kick you.”
The other two members said they wouldn’t agree to that and this guy just said he didn’t need their support. I asked why and he said “You aren’t very smart, are you?” and kicked me.

Now… this is the most inappropiatte, disrespectful, atrocious behavior I’ve ever seen in my life. Not to mention, they wasted 1 hour of my time.
I wished to report but no names to be found. If said person is reading this, I hope you have any decency to apologize but I doubt he’ll have any humanity left.

With that, I wish for the to be a proper kick function. Not this abusive system where you just need one just-as-disrespectful friend to support it.

Stooperdale.3560:

People seem to be inventing lots of reasons now why Mai Trin is a bad boss. You have to stack. You can’t dodge. No trinity. No aggro control. Blah, blah, blah. Forget all that. Mai Trin has been a well designed boss ever since she first appeared in the aetherblade hideout. What seems to be wrong is straightforward -
1) The latest tweak have made the red circles misleading. That should never be the case. Even if they do not tell you everything they should never be misleading. Lupi should have been tidied up as well, long ago, as his circles are also misleading. Missile trajectory is all well and fine but most players cannot dodge based on the visuals of the missile trajectory, and if they could there would be no need for red circles at all.
2) The damage scaling was broken in the last patch, not fixed. I can’t see that anyone had any problems with the previous damage and Mai did kill people who used the wrong tactics.

So there are no problems with Mai that cannot be fixed by reverting the last patch on her. I don’t see why everyone needs to be bring their own personal causes, like trinity in GW2, into this thread whatsoever.

I just want her fixed/reverted/nerfed to normal standards. Anet has quite the policy of not accepting their mistakes so I have little hopes on that. I have been asking for all of the above to voice out the fact that mai trin is currently out of proportion, but the point is just to get anet’s attention, thing that is very hard to do.
There WAS a clear strat before, sort of but now it’s all for their own, running like headless chickens.

LordByron.8369:

i agree that if its very doable at 50 due to players experience, 3 times out of 3 i had almost to solo her at 20-40 totally ignoring team mates because at lower levels is totally messed up.

And its way easier to solo than if you have 4 party members.

This fractal is great because it shows everything is wrong in PvE at the same like:
- no aggro mechanic
- huge numbers to replace AI
- bad collision detection
- wrong tells to confuse players
- lack of trinity without a real counterplan

but more than anything, developers making changes without any test
and they don t even revert issues fast unless they favor players.

P.S. once again you can avoid the pistol.
But as Always anet made the tell almost invisible (mai lift the pistol and shoots an invisible projectile) and the attack effect (the teleport with lights etc) seems the attack itself.

Dodge few seconds after mai lift pistol and the second part won t even happen.

Its like swamp fractal… they put wooden passages that closes when you pass, and instead you have to jump on trees…. total nonsense.
Luckily they have dulfy

I agree with your points. My biggest gripes however are with the clumsy design. Like the false tells, map blocking, projectile hitting mid-air, ect. Those things pretty much screw you over in a fight where you have to dodge everything and getting everything perfect, more so. If they want us to have a fight that is like get 100% in their dance-dance-mai trin then they might as well give us perfect conditions to do so.
While things may not make sense, like in the swamp fractal, at least they are do-able, and that’s all I can care of. Mai Trin is just TOO LONG. If they want a tough boss fight, then sure; just make it SHORT. Making it extremely long makes it annoying since you can have a mistake anytime and 90% of the time I get a lag spike on her 5% remaining hp.
The only reason why I could stand the bad design before was because it was fairly easy to bypass with experience. Now it’s just the kittened cousin nobody wants to play with.

About the pistol, I only manage to dodge 1 of the two hits of the pistol, she always hits me with one part, but it reduces damage to half, which is nice but seeing how I only got two dodges for so many aoes I don’t really know if it’s worth it.

While Mai Trin may be the new liadri it kittenes the crap out of my fractal farming plans. Most of the time I spend rezzing or soloing it which takes an eternity and for me to change classes that have the obvious unfair advantage on the fight.
This fight should at least be fixed to have consistent and logic rules if it’s going to be this demanding.
As it stands right now Mai Trin is our new liadri, in the sense that it’s a fight where she dictates the fighting conditions and very special rules apply to her. Right now she is a GODMOD and here’s why.
She’s immune to conditions for the most part and it’s not until she has less than 5 stacks of shield that she takes SOME duration. This makes smart play like using immobilize, cripple or chill to take out the chill out of the question. So pretty much tank her IN the lightning circles and try to juggle her around.
She has undogeable instagib abilities (unless you use sturdier classes). Just…why….

General problems with the fight that make it tedious:
The arena is too small, especially for the cannon phase, more often than not people without experience WILL be killed by the -nowtoopowerful- cannons.
The bloody roof has kitten that blocks your camera. Seriously, liadri had camera problems too, and it’s a total nuisance to get blocked or crammed into corner camera.
Horrik circles are sometimes incorrect AND the projectile more often than not hits you while travelling, there’s enough to worry about in the fight.

Right now the fight is boring because it feels like I’m being cheated by a godmodder. I just strafe in circles, hit 1 1 1, dodge whip, block bullet, repeat. It takes way too long, and it’s utterly boring. Her having undodge-ables and unblockables is even taking out even more control from the player. And having a designated bullet catcher, while creative, is BORING too, because it requires a specific selection of classes to do, and if your party doesn’t have, then it may as well be good game.

This fight doesn’t follow A LOT of rules that gw2 currently has. It’s takes away too much control from the player which is BAD DESIGN. Basically you have to dance at the rhythm she dictates and at the steps she does (cool for raids, not so much for casual dungeon-stuff like gw2).

Finally, suggestions:
Remove the unblockables and undodgeables from her attacks.
Tone down the cannons, both horrick and cannon phase.
Make her vulnerable to conditions even at shield 10 (like the grawl shaman bubble, first encounter).
Widen the arena
Take off the crap on the roof
Add a visual hint on the player she is targetting (like maw, perhaps less obvious) since it’s impossible to tell if near other players.

While I know this would make the fight all “too easy”, it would put it in line with the other fractals. And not having a difficulty wall that equals to a waste of time for some pugs and a fight that just feels cheap.

Today in my attempt to revisit Mai Trin, in a scale 9, I got some new interesting findings.
Scale 9 is basically still first tier of fractals. Compared to before, her numbers are much higher. The shadowshots averaged in the 9k~ on zerk users, maybe even more. The cannon phase was hitting for 4k each~ as compared to 2k from before. I couldn’t be bothered by the lightning slash or horrick’s cannons because I wasn’t hit by them but the gathered info is enough to get to a conclusion.

Someone took the damage formula and gave it twice as much base damage, resulting on higher level fractals to have twice the intended damage. While she now DOES scale, the BASE is what is wrong and it IS a bug most likely because scaling has to do with increasing with time/scale, and at first tier she hits more than she did before.

For the people saying the fight is fine: it is not, the numbers are overinflated. However, the mechanics are the same and all of her attacks are avoidable, to some degree. This doesn’t mean she should be packed with instagibs and all because it makes some professions useless or have an unfair advantage. No boss in gw2 kills you for not dodging 1 attack, chances are you can survive even in zerk. The only exception is probably Jade maw which has a huge marker and very long CD. While sure, it may be challenging and fun, it’s unbalanced. I can take a bet a group won’t want to tackle Mai Trin in 4 of their daily fractals.

Veckna.9621:

Yet I find it a lot easier to solo it on my thief due to the unreal number of skills with evade frames e.g. withdraw and roll for initiative, won’t even get into the acrobatics tree.
Smoke screen blocks Mai Trin’s lightning shot -> shadowstep ability and well stealth makes cannon phase a walk in the park literally.

Though I must agree that it is out of line when compared to the other final fractals, they’ll need to either buff the remaining final fractals or tone this one down a bit.

You don’t need that many evades as long as you’re fast enough to walk off of horrik’s circles. What I was saying is that smokescreen has a higher CD than her shadowshot, thus, a thief can’t solo Mai Trin, unless you play stealth to recover CD’s for which will take forever to complete.

Super pistol I think does as well, and it also has a sound that will either drive you insane or give you a giggle.

It’s obvious by now that Mai Trin is out of line compared to the other fractal. It’s as if it scales much higher and harder than the others. The encounter is the same, but the numbers are not.
I did try Mai trin on a lvl 29 today. It was a pug party, and while I feel I could be able to solo it still, I could not because I could not switch from my thief (opener). Thief has terrible healing, cleansing and no blocks, naturally, this fight is unfair because what thief has, dodges, doesn’t count of the one instagib you want to dodge. So it was a failure since my armor broke and I could not solo the boss; the cooldowns were too high for the rate in which she used shadowshot.
If I was a guardian i could have solo’d the boss way too easily with the chaining of blocks and uptime vigor.
The problem here is that the numbers were too high, almost as if it was a 50, or harder. People have obviously felt that Mai trin is well out of place but some people are going about “Hey, I want challenge”. And if that is excuse NOT to revert it then I might as well not do fractals any longer since it was already very unrewarding to start with.
My proposition is to tone down Mai and bring back to high-high level fractals for those who like robot-ing boss mechanics to do so while leaving the fractals balanced as they were before.

OT: While we’re on about balancing fractals. I’d like a balance on homing projectiles. More often than not you dodge INTO the orbs of the unclassified fractal asura and they do a 180° to hit you anyway.

TL;DR

Mai Trin is actually 20 levels above the difficulty compared to fractals of the same level. Tone her down and add higher levels for people wanting challenge.

girien.1209:

Its simple…
Dagger:
Autotatack (no nerfed, directly… )
HS: Nerfed
Dancing Dagged: Nerfed to the ground (50% dmg)
CnD: Nerfed

Pistol:
No nerfs here (directly)

Sword
Autoatack (no nerfed, directly)
infiltrator strike (nerfed)
infiltrators return (totally nerfed 2 times , removed stun breaker, and added casting time)

Shortbow
autoatack (no nerfed, directly)
cluster bomb (nerfed, 2 times, range and dmg)
evade shot(nerfed)
poison field (nerfed, 2 times, 1 “weakness on poison” trait, 2nd poison duration)
infiltrator arror (nerfed)

Dual skills:

Pistol Whip: Nerfed, -15% dmg and 1 ini cost.
Larcerous strike: Nerfed, 1 ini cost, and 1 less boon stealed.

And the worst is… QQs still here…

That’s what I’m talking about….
Some skills are so nerfed they aren’t worth the ini cost. Dancing dagger was sucky because it had a very slow speed yet that wasn’t fixed. Deathblossom still sucks for power specs. CnD wasn’t un-nerfed after the nerf of mug. Inf strike wasn’t un-nerfed after a double (I could swear the return was 1 ini) …even triple maybe. Larc strike was simply focused on anti-bunker which was the whole idea of a thief but it got nerf so it didn’t counter bunkers so well (logic??). Shortbow was fine, 100% fine, nobody complained about it, yet it got bombarded down.
And worst of all, they touched all the nerfs so much but the bugs are still there. Very often I end up stuck with shortbow, no way to move. Only way to fix it is to cast 3 again but it may as well be a pitfall. I more often than not get revealed out of thin air. The return with infinate range was fun, sure, but it got super nerfed to have what it has now. Why is it so hard to get decent-like skills. Like headshot being 3 ini. Most of the time when fighting d/p thieves it costs me more ini to interrupt them than it is for them to cast.
The class is nerfed an unfixed on quality aspects that promote big plays and instead it pushes people to depend so much on backstab only and auto attacking with shortbow.

Depends on the game mode. PvP you might want to spend the least time on stealth, thus making a front stab is not SO bad as long as you apply pressure on your opponent without taking much damage. On WvW you want to get backstabs to get the player running but never spend much time trying to get the back for them to panic and run away too far from you.
The idea is that you don’t die, deal damage and your opponent doesn’t escape so backstab isn’t priority no.1

Arcade Fire.4895:

PvE thief damage is good. Learn how to play your class. The thief I do team arenas with is pretty solid also.

It’s definitely a player issue.

The damage is okay. The team utility not top best but certainly niche.
On pvp, the thief is okay, it blows up to any sort of focus and has many hard counters but with the hard condi meta it’s quite a nightmare, the thief having little condi removal.
Only viable spec I’ve played that actually doesn’t let the enemy cap for free is the 30 acro and maybe 30 trickery or Crit strikes, depending. But even then, CC is the worst enemy due to high CD stunbreakers and that’s very abundant in condition builds.
I said it’s playable, but certainly very punishing and not mistake friendly, unlike other classes.
My point is that the thief class feels very crippled, and it has been nerfed to feel that way.
Take for example the short bow. The evade nerf, posion cloud nerf, weakness on poison nerf, inf arrow nerf, range nerf, speed nerf.
The same goes with sword. And ironically they’re the best weapons for pvp. Yet they still work, but much, much weaker.
And in a game mode focused on staying on a node, it’s probably the worst class to do so.

ronpierce.2760:

What is this build, anyways? I can’t say that I’ve ever encountered a, what I’d consider, an overly dangerous guardian. x.X

I wouldn’t know. Some guardians are usually managable. You know, high damage, but you see it coming. 20k damage in 1 second is kind of over the top (with latency excluded) so even when dodging it, it’s still a free kill. That’s the “worst” one I saw. The others had pressure here and there but at least the fight seemed fair. But this one guy just had me staring at the screen when nearly instadowned, alone. His seals crit for 2k dmg a pop, or more and just that was a pain in the butt.

redslion.9675:

The damage comes from two big skills:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shield_of_Wrath

and

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protector%27s_Strike

The guardian will cast the first skill, wait until it’s about to break up, then use Judge’s Intervention (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Judge%27s_Intervention) to teleport to you, blow the shield up in your face and cast the second skill. As soon as you hit him with anything, you’ll recieve the damage from Protector’s Strike aswell.

Shield of Wrath might offer a telegraph on what’s going to happen, and you can deal with it according to your class. Once the guardian is near you, try not to hit him until Protector’s Strike wears off.

That’s what I thought at first. Keep him at range, kite him over but then He’d hit me for 7k with an orb of light. Pretty much what a backstab hits on a full-full glass cannon (in pvp). Also their auto attacks hit like a truck. I got rolled over several times, and tried to learn from each encounter, and I did (granted, that I wasn’t caught by surprise) making the fight last longer. However, with their invulnerability and block uptime it seemed like a dead cause in a 1v1. In a thief, they just seem way too much of a risk, even when playing a relatively tanky build with many, many dodges and blinds.
Another of the many counters to thief in pvp it seems!

I used to play a thief back when it was focused on damage and the good old mug+cnd combo but they nerfed their damage pretty hard so it didn’t have a high damage combo (granted, that only instagibbed squishes). So they get nerfed pretty hard (and multiple times) because of this. Now thieves hit like a wet noodle, more or less.

However, I keep encountering guardians, some more intense than others that take down 20k hp~ in more or less 1 second. I don’t get time to react to it. Some deal less damage than others, but their damage seems over the top in the sense that you NEED invulnerability to stand against them.
I do know they suck in teams and that they sacrifice all (or most) of it to have that damage but people complained a bunch of instagibbing thieves and they got nerfed into oblivion. This guardian build, though, seems to have much more damage.
In some cases they take down all my health mid-attack so their potential is obviously even higher.

I’m not whining though, since pvp is a team game and they don’t do well in teams, however, it did pick up my interest to see how absurd it was in terms of spike damage because I thought pvp had all the damage lower than usual.
I am also seeking help to counter these type of guardians, on a 1v1 setting. It’s not hard to evade the combo IF you see it coming, but even when evading it’s a guaranteed half health lost, and even when playing smart with blinds and evades they still have many panic buttons as well as fast attacks that can ignore blind and thus making the other half of health an easy task.

There have been plenty and many posts about last refuge and people wanting to take it out or change but it seems as if Devs ignore it or don’t admit it’s a bad designed trait.

I’ve played many Moba’s, watched tournaments and the like which are games based on PVP. And seeing how this trait works is perhaps the most baffling thing to see.

The trait is designed to let you survive a little longer by giving you a 2 second stealth once you drop under a certain hp. This is meant so that you get to survive and run away. Problem is that in PVP you don’t really want to run away. Why? In pvp usually your life is not as valuable as it is in pve, it’s just a resource. If you can give your life to prevent the enemy from capping a point for a good time or distract enemies from a point then it’s worth it. It’s all about the total worth and what your resource can achieve.
First off, while in stealth you can’t cap (it doesn’t even have a grace period so that stealth thieves don’t automatically lose a point vs another person). So procing this will mean more stealth uptime which you have to break in order to cap again.
Secondly, it’s very common in pro scene that even if the person has very low health that they stay in the battlefield juking around and baiting the opponent into a trap or whatever have you.
Third, the threshold is very, very low and due to the thief’s low stats it’s morelikely they die rather stay alive.
Fourth, it’s automatic and it doesn’t interrupt your current action, thus making the skill more like: “causes reveal under certain hp” which is the opposite of what you want and need.
This skill has no place in PVP and arguably in WvW or PVE. Here are some ideas to change it:
Proc when downed
Click to trigger
Interrupt current action
Release blinding powder or smokescreen instead

I hope that for once it’s heard. In PVP or WvW, even with 20k health it’s annoying to deal with and makes me want to take out those 10 points away from SA if it weren’t for the sucky condi cleanse thief has.

DatPieGuy.6540:

thieves are in a great spot right now, are you kidding me? in PvE thieves have the highest dps outside of eles when running a good build, WvW thieves that run SA are some of the most annoying roamers that exist, and every high level tPvP match has at least 1 thief thanks to their unparalleled out of combat mobility and ability to end fights quickly with high burst. When played at a high skill level, thief is one of the best classes.

In PVE? No… it doesn’t match that dps that warrior and elementalist do. I tried full-full-full damage with scholar and 5(ot 6)/6/0/0/15(or 10) and it’s mediocre at best. Might on signets, regular 11k crits but can’t survive anything nor does it bring ANY support to the team and you sacrfice EVERYTHING to deal damage. I find more balanced spec mroe fun since you can do high melee uptime. And it’s fractals (and not all of them) I’m talking about, other content besides can be easily solo’d.
Good thieves can beat anything, sure, but take for example. I take on a fight with an axe/shield + longbow warrior. He has sustain for days, and I have to dodgde/blind almost every single attack and on top of that he can fight on top of the tiny blackpowder like no problem. I can beat him by outplaying him by x2 times skill or more. But he recieves every attack and basically I see him just blowing his rotation at thin air where as I have to calculate my resources very carefully and make no mistake.
Same goes for engis, mesmers, necros, some easier to beat than others but it just seems that they have TOO much at their disposal and we have next to nothing.
We have high CD stun breaks that barely have any sideeffect that’ll make you survive the afterpart. He have low stats. Low damage on weapons overall. No boons, lack of conditions, ect ect.
The thief has too little on its own.
Take an untraited class of any other kind and most likely the thief will get owned, big time. The only advantage thief has is the bigger use of mechanical skill with shadow step, and extra dodges but is that enough to compensate for the lack of everything else?

Thief has been my main since forever. I’ve done everything and anything with it.

And I’ve always seen it as a profession with the main purpose of being good at pvp or p(layer)k(ill)-ing.
In pve stealth sucks, most of the time mobs don’t disjoint attacks so they’ll hit you anyway, even when stealth goes full duration and what not. It doesn’t disjoint channeling, projectiles, nothing. It flat out sucks. It doesn’t break aggro (anymore) for good and for bad so basically you taunt enemies back at you. In high fractals they’re good because of how broken some things are (dredge) but besides that, you need to trait heavily in damage, thus making your health worth a mosquito’s. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve made it work, and it’s not as bad as it sounds, but the class mechanics (steal so you get bashed in the face, shadowstep that don’t generaly disconnect channels/projectiles, ect) are broken and this is extremely unfun.
For PVP they’re a 0 mistake class. You can trait heavily into defensive so that your damage doesn’t mean squat, and then your task is to be annoying mosquito that prevents enemies from capping. Initiative is quite unforgivable, especially when half of your skills deal no real damage all the while all the other classes blow off rotations that deal exponentially more damage and what seems near endlessly.
For WvW they’re great for avoiding zergs but…that’s it. With the introduction of dire gear and crit nerf, it’s all too hard to play.

Thief still “works” I still manage to kill mini zergs of mindless people and the like, but a mesmer or an engi could do that with much more ease. 1v1 not the best, team support it lacks, zerging it sucks, pvp zerging sucks more, lack of cleanse, lack of hp, lack of damage (unless traiting almost obligatorly on Crit strikes).

They seem to lack everywhere but, yet, having to play with much more skill than other people is stressing.

I have the exact same problem. Some people managed to snag a bunch of dragonite in an event in the past. And curretnly, the way to go is to famr it with alts accounts (so you can gear just one).
Zergs are mind-numbingdly boring and the routine of wait 5 minute, press 1 1 1 the next minute and repeat is not fun, at all. That aside, you only get a spare amount of dragonite.
People say you can treat this game as a more serious one and join a “train” that does all events on reset. However, it’s the same problem of zerging. I wouldn’t mind if dragonite would be most efficiently farmed in zergs but not being able to get any from other activities is flat out dumb. On top of that there’s no convertion of mats, trade or anything.

I’ve been trying to get dragonite myself but tabbing on the timer page every once in a while and cursing if I missed the big events or just tping to Orr to see if there’s a temple zerg around, it’s all not fun at all.

Calvin.5380:

You don’t need ascended armor for anything in this game. Lvl50 Fractals can be done with just ascended accessories that you can now even share between your characters.

You’re welcome

It took me a while to get the accessories I wanted. They were accessible enough that I could get a second set because I wanted other stats. It took me some while but it was worth it.
With farming world bosses it took me like a month to get 1 weapon. I have no hopes whatsoever to get full armor but at least I’d like to get the offhand weapon as well or some other. But 1 month per pieces is pretty depressing.

JRoy.7180:

http://dulfy.net/2014/04/23/event-timer/

Handy timer plus shows the rewards for each boss, including amount of ore. Heck just do the queen daily, she drops 30.

I do use the timer. The problem here is that the ore you get per event is miserable and it’s timed gated. It basically boils down to this:
Wait 5-1 minute for the prevent, do the pre or wait idly at the boss stage for hard leeching. Do the boss (aka spam ranged #1), get a really cheap amount of ore. Repeat.
All while I have stacks and stacks of the other two that I have to keep destroying. At this rate though, it’ll take a bunch of months to get full ascended armor because the RNG gods of fractals are absurdly mean.
On top of that, you need a LOT of available time just to do events and you can do nothing in bewteen them or have to plan ahead with which ones are to come. So it boils down to waiting idly, go do something else. And to make it worse, the events that give substantial amount of ore happen really rarely and temples are pretty much random.
The other two you get by playing the game, this one though, you get by doing something I loathe and it’s the only way to get it.

Da Sonic.6521:

I agree that some instabilities seem a little unbalanced, but I disagree with the ones you mention. Outflanked simply encourages keeping in mind your positioning, while Last Laugh is one of the few instabilities that actually impacts how the dungeon is played. Examples of bad instabilities would be Bloodlust, Fleeting Precision, or Overextended, which are just straight up DPS throttles. Instabilities are intended to change the way you play encounters, and if you don’t like a particular one, you can just do a different level (as you have 10 choices per tier, and rewards differ very little in-tier).

Outflanked is good when there’s little mobs. As I said, devs went trigger happy with mob spawns (zergs) so naturally you will always get outflanked in some scenarios and as I stated above it makes your average mob an instagib machine (I’ve been hit 46k in the front because lag by a normal vet) I agree it was “fun” at first but when I had the grawl fractals twice for this, it’s definately not well designed. First off, the grawl fight is a “bring reflects or die” type of fight and it’s quite tough without the instability. With it, it turns into a nightmare. You have mobs all around you while there’s a “rush” on popping the shaman’s bubble which happens to only trigger once per ability use and on top of that mobs nuking you at all sides.

I actually finished it. 3 guardians 1 mesmer and me a thief. It took around….50 tries? I lsot count after the 2 hour count we were there. We were being hit around 6k spits on average and arrows were flat out deadly, not to mention the rest of the aoes. One of his spells actually hit 50k x2. Those numbers are just out of hand. And the only way we could make it through was coordinating reflection to have a close to 100% uptime on those and slow’d down dps to wait for cooldowns like quickness or the like.
In my experience it was a raid-like difficulty level but the difficulty came from bad mechanics. Let me explain.
Shaman has
- No/short telegraphs on ranged
- Low cooldowns
- Melee instagibs
- Condition spam
- Flies very high (camera issues for said short telegraphs)
-Burning spam
-Mass aoe
-Random rush that can be either too quick or too long
- Applies burning when standing still

Grubs have:
-Moderate high HP
- Immobilize for combowombo
- Attack that bypasses some reflections
- Massive numbers
- Near hitscan projectile

Benefits:
You can dodge an arrow by sidestepping (low chance).

I can tell you, it’s very possible. And if I gather another coordinated group it could be done in one go. But these are the consequences:
MUST have 3 guardians. It’s a HUGE difficulty curve. And the reward is total crap.

I’d rather just stick with 39’s and 49’s. Not because they’re easy, but because they’re worth it and fair.

As for right now most instabilities are okay, and can be bypassed for the most part. However, there are two that make life a living hell. First is one is outflanked and the other is last laugh. For most easy dungeons they’re managable but for harder ones they make it near impossible.
Outflanked increases mob damage by (what seems to be) x2 but which makes crits from mobs x2x2. That makes your common mob a potential instagib machine. Second problem is how it considered you being on the side, which is only 45 degress from your front. For most dungeons it’s pretty ignorable sinse you stack and stay there, however, for shaman, for example, it makes it a living hell.

For last laugh, it’s just a terrible idea altogether. Since dungeon makers decided to go happy with the mob spawns then the practice of “stacking” is almost a neccesity (cliffside, dredge, ect) and this is just a spit in the face to players as htey get knocked back, back-to-back with no diminishing returns, apparently undodgeable and unblindable. Stability can’t be kept up 100% of the time and it just makes harpies more annoying than they should be.

I’m one who thinks instabilities were a terrible idea altogether but these two just seem way off the charts. They don’t mix well with the dungeon either and most of the time they seem unrefined, untested and just some wierd dressing they decided to put over the dungeons to try and make them interesting.

Lalangamena.3694:

dragonite is from world bosses and www….
have so much i dont know what to do with it anymore.
I wish we could sell some on TP….

Zerg world bosses and Zerg wvw.
I am a thief, I don’t do well in zergs because of short range, high squishiness and depending on melee for burst (aka, tagging)
I have tried wvw but the only way I can tag a lord is if the zerg is luckily small enough and noob(uplevels) enough to not kill the lord right away and/or don’t get too ahead of me. If it wasn’t enough, there IS a karma train around in the server but alas, my computer can’t handle so much models so most of the time I can’t even see or do any action.
In world bosses it’s almost always empty OR it’s way too huge it’ll make my computer crash.
It’s either one extreme or the other. At least I may have the chance to do karka queen if I manage to get a group going but again, chances are slim.

There have been many posts about dragonite ore, I’ve done my fair amount of research but I just can’t deal with it any longer.

I’m aware that some people can get it very easier and got plenty from the living story-stuff but in my server, (maguuma) it’s near impossible to get. I have the timers on all the time, but people simply don’t do these events. I try to solo them, call people, join guilds but it’s near useless. I’ve been questing for ascended for about a month. Managed to get the gold, the mats, got 500 weaponsmith, got everything BUT the dragonite. In the whole month I’ve gotten 75 dragonite ore out of 500.

I’ve tried guesting, WvW and don’t tell me to use alts because I can’t even get my fair share on my main.
I mean, I get that the point is to get people to do all content but dragonite is just impossible because it’s the ONLY mat that you can’t get on your “own” and need a zerg-like group in order to get.
Cant’ we have it drop from jumping puzzles? I don’t care if they’re utterly frustrating, dragonite should be able to be acquired by people on their own.

Sarrs.4831:

Stats already kinda do have diminishing returns. You’ll get to a situation where a point of power is worth less than a point of precision, which is worth less than a point of critical damage/ferocity. Same with defensive stats.

The change also won’t actually change any behavior.

Except people are free to choose from. You don’t have to go berzerer or gtfo because time spent killing is widely different.
At first celestial sounds like the perfect dream but if you only want offense and defense (no healing, condi) then you’re better off taking mixed armor.

It does change behavior because people would be able to gear for both condition and power without getting less than half of efficiency as it is now. The ratio can be less violent too, it could be 1.5 for start and then diminish to .5 Or even less.

It would also balance out a bit gear sets like dire which are somewhat absurd since they get both defense and offense.

Behavior would be: I could take some knight’s and valkyr’s instead of berserker without having my damage severely punished. Or, I could use celestial armor to get the best out of my wells as a necro.

As stats are right now, they promote specialization and very, very rigid gear set. Want condi? Go dire. Want power dmg? Go berserker. Want bunker? Go soldier.
And if you plan to spread your stats out then unless you invest a big chunk of your gear slots for it, then it would barely be a difference.

I was itchy at first posting this here, but it concerns the general balance of all classes so it might as well be the place.

It was widely known that in PVE most people focus on going zerker gear and the like because of the insane difference of time spent doing the run. The difference of damage bewteen berserker and soldier, for example, is extremely high. On the other hand, in pvp there’s the infamous “bunker” builds that are near unkillable or that take several people to take down. The problem with all this are the extremes. There is no control whatsoever in stats, one can go as high in damage as they wish or as high in survivability and there’s literally no control. With full buffs and bonuses the difference bewteen damage of two people in berserker can be of X3! And with soldiers it’s probably hundreds.
Right now people have little to no incentive to mix gear up. Sets like rabid or shaman are often ignored for being sub-optimal. And by ignored I mean sent to oblivion.

How to fix this? Well, it’s easy.
“Diminishing returns” on stats.

What does this mean? This means that the higher you get a stat, the less effect it has.
Lets take an example. Each point of vitality would give 50 hit points if the total bonus is below 100 vitality, then after 100 it gives 30, after 200 it gives 20 and so on.
This is an imaginary example of course, and it’s just to represent how the mechanism works.

How does this improve build diversity? Well, say someone is wearing fullzerker. Right now, 100 points in power probably sound more attractive than 100 in vitality. But how about 50 power for 100 vit? 20? 10? That’s the choice, the higher you get one (or several) stats, the less powerful they become.

This gives the chance for people to gear towards condition and physical damage without dealing considerably less damage. It would give celestial a better place. Would diminish the gaps bewteen gears and people who maximize stats like no tomorrow.
The idea is to cut out the edges slightly so that gears aren’t so extreme and single-purposed.
Given how GW lets you distribute stats so freely, this idea lets you choose stats and gear sets without much fear of “screwing up” and also it would let the meta shift slightly away from berserker to other alternatives.

I’ve been playing guild wars 2 for what I believe it’s been a year or so and I always had this concern about damage stacking.
Pre-ascended gear people would reach exotics and it was pretty much peak for stats, gear-wise, however, there was already another tier that came from buffs.
You could compare a fresh exotic character VS. one with top tier food, blood lust, wvw leech bonus, oils/stone, and might stacking. The latter seems pretty acceptable because it requires plenty effort to aqcuire and it’s temporary. The problem here is that the one stacked up is levels ahead of the person who isn’t. This puts people to a disadvantage when fighting stacked people or in pve, the balanced content around said damage.

It is true preparation is part of the game but having to buy food over and over, worry about stacks and all requires a lot of gold if used for long periods of time. So the game ends up being farm fest for ego fun. This particularly affects casual players who don’t have time for this constant farming. In WvW it essentially creates one shotting builds which I’m guilty of using (and seem absurdly unfair), or in a better scenarios a wrecking combo. And so nerfs come along for damage and the people who don’t stack all this have an incredibly hard time.

Take for instance the upcoming nerf to crit damage. There were boss fights that were insanely long in fractals and that’s when all people were alive and dealign damage, but it was VERY long and tedious (shaman with flank bonus? gl in hell) with the current damage. And that’s with people not stacking damage. Where as if people stack all this damage they can take down any boss in 5 seconds or less (granted that there’s coordination).

So there’s a huge disparity for players with damage stacking and that always seemed like a problem. The “true” higher tier to exotic for me isn’t ascended but these other buffs that do prove not to be minimal. Maybe the solution wasn’t to nerf damage but rather the high-high-HIGH cap it has by balancing out foods or making them more durable, accesible, but something should be made to even this tier out.

Grimwolf.7163:

If it can take you across ledges, then it’s better for one very simple reason; it uses the mechanics of a teleport, not a “shadowstep”.

True, but even so, you could not teleport to very awkward places. Which makes me wonder, why not treat shadowstep as a teleport but restrict the “places” you can teleport to (towers, keeps and such from wvw come to mind.) I mean, who wants a crap blink that is glitchy.
It’s just a suggestion to see if anet could fix it.

This afternoon I was doing the spider guild rush, over the dredge cave. For those who don’t know, they have a skill for shadowstepping.
Guess what, it worked PERFECTLY. No bugs that I could have seen, it could actually jump across platforms and was pretty fun.
Now lets take a look at the thief possibilities… IA doesn’t work for much. Shadowstep is the best but it usually gets stuck with pathetic hills or elevations.
In conclusion, a minigame has better mechanics a whole class. That’s…cool.

Some of you might say that it’s different, sure it is but it WORKS fine; the thief might sometimes even not work.

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

The point of the thread is , he thinks thieves are OP so he joins them and he have sympathy for those against one i think.

It was to narrate the silly things that happen in gw2 and how unfun it may be compared to gw1 (except for a monk party >:C)
Sort of sympathy… but I think people feel like:

Since d/p is the fotm for wvw or at least for some time now, it’s becoming very common to find this set while playing it myself.
I can tell you, it’s the most BORING duel EVER.
Usually, I don’t abuse of stealth and apply a lot of pressure on the enemy using shadowstep and well timed dodges to mitigate damage. However, against other d/p’s, they abuse so much of stealth it becomes a game of who can hold perma stealth longer. It’s boring, VERY boring. And if you don’t play it, you might lose because less might stacks, less regen, ect. In the end, neither wins, but it takes a LONG while until one figures it out.
As a thief, a d/p is the least I want to fight as a d/p. It feels so cheesy when used against you xD