Guild Wars 2

wish.1027:

Scorael.8952:

If there is a way to at least gauge where his position is, it will even the odds.

Theres an easy way to tell where he’s going, 99% of the time. If he’s attacking people, he’s moving to position himself behind whoever he is attacking in the faster way possible. If he’s running away and far away from you, he’s running straight in the direction you last saw him running. If he’s running away from you and is sort of close, he probably did a 180 and is running the exact opposite direction you last saw him.

This, also the difference in stats can be major in WvW. I’ve only met two thieves that were an absolute nightmare to deal with, but you could tell they had full exotics and infused gear and they had plenty of room to move around in. If he stuck around even after the keep was captured, he probably noticed that the players there looked like easy targets with weak gear.

Well I just tried to come back to PvP after having not played for a month or two. I started in a few regular matches and felt I was back in the swing of things so I tried doing some tournament matches. The very first game we get destroyed 500 to 100 and all the while an enemy player is calling me “garbage” and a “piece of kitten”. The very next game I got on the trebuchet at the beginning of the match only to be attacked right away and killed. Then one of my team mates told me I sucked at trebbing and that I should go back to regular matches. That sort of stuff isn’t just demoralizing, it’s distracting and it’s difficult to keep playing in a regular fashion. I always feel like “now I gotta one up them” and I just end up playing worse and not working with my team mates like I should. It makes me want to stop PvPing.

So when does this sort of thing cross the line into verbal abuse? The only thing I can really do about it is report it since trying to talk back is pointless, but I don’t want to go reporting something unless I know it’s a violation for sure.

Varonth.5830:

• Slight cooldown increase (12-15s)

I think this is the fairest option, although some of the mesmers other skills still need to be buffed to compensate. Maybe another option would be to make the distortion for Blurred frenzy behave differently in that the user can be struck by unblockable attacks, or that the user takes zero damage during the duration. Either way, I’m content with the skill right now. Mesmers needs buffs and nerfs in other areas more (daze in the staff 5 skill is kittening bull kitten)

Varonth.5830:

• Move to Offhand-Sword #4
• Move Offhand-Sword #4 to Mainhand-Sword #2

I like this idea, but it would need a serious buff to not make sword mainhand worthless. Right now, it blocks and creates a clone. The clone creation takes about a second leaving you vulnerable to more attacks, which doesn’t really make sense since it’s supposed to be a defensive skill and one block is absolutely nothing. It is worthless offensively too since Mesmers already have plenty of ways to create more clones much faster than that can and without having to rely on the enemy triggering it for you.

Spirit watch is a breeding ground for hostility. Team composition is much more important and a build poorly suited for spirit watch can put a team at a disadvantage no matter how good the player is. One person disconnects? You might have a fighting chance on any other map. On spirit watch? You’re screwed. You can only focus on one thing at a time, capping or the orb and that makes people who’ve focused on the orb and then find nowhere to cap it or people who’ve focused on capping and then nobody is running the orb get angry. All in all just a frustrating map, especially for three days in a row non-stop.

Don’t care about the pets, I’m frustrated with their insane ability to dodge and spam protection and regen. It wasn’t until I tried out the new sword dagger skills that I realized just how bad it is.
Oh, he’s got boons! Let’s rip em! Flanking strike, rip… oh he’s got protection up again, I guess I’ll just rip it again evadedevadedprotectionevadedevaded and now he has full health, I have 12 stacks of bleeding, and Fido just knocked my face into the dirt. I’ll admit that I haven’t looked at ranger much so I don’t know how to counter very well, but it’s annoying and discouraging how they can so easily walk all over me in a 1vs 1 situation without so much as getting scratched.

Kwll.1468:

So a slight buff to pets have made ranger god’s? Beastmaster and Trappers have always been good but no better then a lot of other classes/builds.

They were already pretty kittening strong. Now that builds with comparable strength took slight nerfs, they’re ever so stronger. It has nothing to do with the pets as most rangers don’t and still won’t even use the pets that got buffed.

Not funny or productive.

bhagwad.4281:

It would encourage build diversity because there are hard counters to every “one trick pony” build. In a team setting your weaknesses are not so apparent. In 1v1, you can exploit them.

In current play, balanced builds are discouraged since one pure bunker and one pure DPS can cover each other’s soft spots and together present a formidable team. There’s no advantage to being balanced right now. In a 1v1, if you spec too much of one thing you will surely meet someone who will take advantage of that.

What we will have with dueling is a proliferation of balanced builds having decent offense/defense tradeoffs and a lot more emphasis on skill.

The meta game would never be stable for this very reason. And isn’t that what we want?

Let me take back that last statement then, I misinterprited you. I thought you meant build diversity for the general PvP game, not just duels. Of course I understand that there are going to be specific builds for 1 vs 1. I’m all for having a duel system in place, but that’s specifically why I think it shouldn’t be ranked. Even if you disagree with me that there would be an end all be all build, I think we can both agree that a-net isn’t going to balance the game around dueling. If it awards rank, then it’ll encourage a play to win mentality and not play for fun or practice, which means people will try to find the end all be all build and there will be a meta. We should probably also consider that if it’s ranked, that means there will need to be a definite winner and loser and people will be more inclined to find ways to cheat the system. What’s stopping someone from staying stealthed for near indefinitely? There would probably need to be a single capture point to stop people from dodging death forever, but then extreme bunker defense becomes much more appealing.

bhagwad.4281:

If anything, dueling would fuel the creation of more unusual builds that no one has thought of yet.

I don’t see how it would encourage any sort of creativity that doesn’t already exist, especially since it would become much simpler without team synergy to consider. All it would do is create a 1 on 1 meta game seperate from normal play.

You can still learn from tPvP team fights. And yeah, a dueling system would be neat and all, but the game wasn’t balanced with dueling in mind. If you could rank up through dueling, I gurantee two or three builds would rise to the top and dominate all others and then it would just get boring quickly. Not to mention rank doesn’t always accurately reflect skill, and with the ability to gain rank through dueling it would become even less so. How would you be able to tell if someone is an experienced dueler or if they’re an experienced tourny player? If they implemented a dueling system it should reward glory and only glory, that way it’s a just-for-fun thing and doesn’t become extremely competitive. Maybe it could have a small, seperate ranking system too that’s kind of like WvW rank, but just for bragging rights.

Vence.6974:

Lol plz a good S/D thief will beat a good D/any thief any day simply because when you combine sword with some acrobatics, you literally become the fastest profession in the game. You’re the most agile with infiltrator’s, FS, withdraw, shadowstep/roll for initiative. You can get to anywhere really fast assuming you have a shortbow, and even without it, you still have high endurance regen, swiftness on dodge, and infinite teles. Not to mention, you do extremely high steady dmg with your auto attack and can strip (soon steal) boons at will. The really kool part bout this spec is its ability to sync well with any utilities you prefer (deceptions, stealth, signets, and even traps) yea thats rite, traps too because infiltrator’s teles you too an enemy and while they’re immobilized, just set the trap and watch it activate instantly.

Exept you have no way of keeping up with a fast moving target like a dagger thief can with heart seeker. Infiltrators does a short immobilize, then you have to burn 2 initiative to teleport back to reuse it which will pretty much always teleport you AWAY from the person you’re trying to kill. The 4 skill for the offhand is rarely ever worth the initiative. Once you’ve used up your teleports, your options for getting back into the fight is very limited.

I think the main problem with ride the lightning is that it’s too accessable. You can run a bulk spec and still use it, which is completely out of line. This will be a good change if they change a trait to revert it to its old functionality so that it helps more fragile elementalists to escape.

Apolo.5942:

Reslinal.2359:

I for one am really glad there’s no healers required in this game. Enjoyed the combat much more in this game than in GW1.

Its of course your right, you are also the first person i hear state this. And i do own GW1 and expansions for the record.

I also like having no healers. GW1 PvP was basically nobody dies until the monk dies. Or in the case of organized PvP, spiking over and over again.

Erebos.6741:

You don’t deduce that extra management of downed opponents extends the time required to defeat them? And what if they rally?; Would you acknowledge the time then?
- This adversely affects the pace of play between downing multiple enemies.

Think of it like a race between two people with the addition/removal of the mechanic to see who could defeat the most enemies in a set amount of time. Who do you think would win?

How many kills you get isn’t everything, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes to down someone if you’re fighting multiple enemies on a point since the people that are up will still be contesting the point. Even with multiple enemies I think the pace is fine. If you can’t finish someone quickly, then you should be avoiding off-point fights. If it takes a long time to finish someone on a point, it doesn’t matter as much since you’re still contributing by contesting/defending the point.

Erebos.6741:

While adding depth to play, the downed state is such a powerful mechanic that it takes precedence from both teams to finish/rally the afflicted player, effectively condensing meaningful choice!
Favourable support for recuperation in stacked play; adds a higher level of bias:

I’m asserting here that the likelihood between stomping and reviving downed players favour reviving, granted higher contingency (even amount of players).
Why you might ask? A fair and difficult question to answer, but here goes:

This is due to the effective options and counteractive options each side has to offer, which if you list, cancel each other out, e.g. stealth stomp/revive, stability stomp/revive, knockback, etc. What decides the imbalance is the stomping and reviving mechanics themselves.

To demonstrate this I’m going to use another synopsis:

After just being downed, four players of the allying team rally to try revive the player, the opposing team of five all counter by performing a stomp. What do think is the outcome?
a) The player is revived?
b) The player is defeated?
- Because of the stacking effect, the time taken to revive the player outrivals that of stomping.

Now you’re probably thinking “that’s silly!” and subjectively you would be right! But remember that there are a magnitude of possible outcomes! And conceptually they lead to favour of reviving – due to its stacking effect.

I don’t think that’s a good example since five people should never all try to stomp a player at the same time. Only one or two people should be trying to finish while the others apply pressure to the downed player or focus on other enemies. If all five enemies try to revive at the same time then they can all be interrupted by a single attack, not to mention AoE damage or the fact that they’re practically wide open for a single target spike. Plus chances are one of them will be too wounded or too frail to risk reviving, making them a prime target if all their team mates decide to revive the downed player instead of providing support. Even if they manage to revive the person, it’s still not a complete loss since that person has the downed health penalty and they’re vulnerable when getting up. If you can interrupt their heal or snare them before they get away they can quickly be downed again.

Also, the only time I EVER use the stomp is when I think it’ll be a guranteed kill, otherwise I just attack the player. I always attack them a few times before beginning the stomp too to make it harder to revive them. If the player has nobody else helping them, that’s when I stomp to blow their teleport or KD skills since trying to stomp twice is often times faster than attacking.

While it does prolong fights, I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Like I said, kills aren’t everything. I enjoy the power struggle.

Erebos.6741:

• Overpowering effectiveness

Effective how? The five points gained from killing an enemy generally makes up for a fair amount of time spent fighting them.

Erebos.6741:

• Little depth gained from added level of complexity

I don’t think this is a con, but I can see where you’re coming from in that you feel the added depth from the downed state doesn’t outweigh its disadvantages, correct?

Erebos.6741:

• Interrupts and slows the pace of play

I disagree, in my mind someone that is downed is either dead or they’re a potential resurrect that I just need to keep down. It doesn’t interrupt my pace at all. I like the situations that having a downed player creates.

Erebos.6741:

• Overall depth lost from prevailing alternatives
• Favourable support for recuperation in stacked play; adds a higher level of bias

I don’t understand what you’re saying with these points.

Erebos.6741:

While adding depth to play, the downed state is such a powerful mechanic that it takes precedence from both teams to finish/rally the afflicted player, effectively condensing meaningful choice!

Someone that’s downed is down, not dead. That’s almost like saying that having to kill other plays limits choice. Dropping an AoE or condition on someone is enough to keep them down while you focus on killing another player. Control also becomes a more appealing choice for such a situation to keep people from helping the downed player, as opposed to control just being a snare to kill people with.

Erebos.6741:

1. What in your opinion is conceptually more difficult:
   a) Soloing two players with the downed state mechanic?
   b)Three without?
   - Which accomplishment would be more satisfying to you?

Both are practically impossible against competent players. I find winning a 2 on 3 or 3 on 4 more satisfying since you can overcome the odds with team work. Winning a 1 on 2 is satisfying and all, but it still usually comes down to the other two players being inexperienced or just dumb luck.

Erebos.6741:

1. What would you deem more fun - considering all mindsets:
   a)Downing two players solo but dying to a third; rallying the aforementioned downed players?
   b)The same scenario minus the downed mechanic?

Getting gang banged isn’t fun, but I try not to stick around when it turns into a 2 on 1.

Erebos.6741:

1. One or more players overwhelm you and defeat is inescapable. Would you:
   a) Rather delay death by entering the downed state?
   b) Die and sooner re-spawn?

I rather delay death since defeat is never inescapable with the help of a team mate and you’ll be killed rather quickly anyways if you’re in a no-win situation. It always makes me a little angry when a see someone get downed, I run over and start dropping war banner on them, and then they just allow themselves to get killed when I know they could’ve used one of their downed skills to buy just enough time for warbanner to res them.

Erebos.6741:

1. Two contingencies square-off and you are soon plummeted into downed state. Would you:
   a) Prefer an ally immediately rehabilitate you?
   b) Linger there for awhile until someone is able to rejuvenate you?
   c) Just die?
   - I could tell you what the enemy most desires.

Linger and wait for an ally to revive me. Dying would give the enemy team points. Immediate revive? How would that even work?

bhagwad.4281:

Thieves have an essentially infinite access to stealth not just with utilities, but with weapon skills as well.

Maybe in PvE, but you’re on crazy pills if you think you can do this in PvP.

The problem I have with mesmers right now isn’t stealth, its that I’m often unintentionally hitting clones and phantasms with key attack skills because of right click targeting. Trying to close the gap and then suddenly leaping in the almost complete opposite direction just plain sucks. You can at least predict where someone is when they’re in stealth.

caporal moktahr.3408:

Thinking about the fact that warriors often rely on their utilities to help them maintain close contact with their target or relieve condition pressure , how did you managed to bypass those drawbacks ( you were using at least three banners am I right) ?

I used the war banner for my elite, the precision banner, the healing banner, and for my third utility, balanced stance. To deal with conditions I had the shrug it off trait that automatically made me use shake it off when I had two or more conditions and then mending for my heal. But really, when you have 300 vitality from the tactics line (addtional +200 because of soldier’s amulet), conditions aren’t any more of a threat than straight up damage is as long as you use mending at the right time, especially since your regeneration helps offset a good amount of pressure damage.

As for maintaining close contact, I have a longbow for my second set so that helps solve a lot of those problems. Eviscerate and Shield bash can also be used as gap closers. But even then, you don’t really need to maintain close contact. When my friend and I were near the banners it was very dangerous to approach us, but if either of us moved out of range of them we became much weaker. As long as you’re on a point, you won’t have to worry about catching up with other people because they come to you.

caporal moktahr.3408:

Hello , first I would say it’s nice you tried it and found people who wanted to test it with you.

My two cents are that I dont like banners not because they’re not powerful but because I dont find them really fun to play. When I carry a banner I feel like it turns myself into a boongiving machine wich can be strong but lacks the damage the agressive playstyle that is the core design of the warrior gameplay.

As a warrior I want to get a feeling near the one I had playing warrior in GW1. That means using my damage and mobility to keep pressure on the enemy while using adrenaline skills to initiate a spike. Banners do not fit my playstyle they feel passive for me.

So I think banners are overlooked mostly because warrior-players dont see the warrior like a support , or they think other class do the support-job better.

Well, I feel like I still had an agressive play style. I had an axe and shield with 15 in precision which gave me a nearly 85% critical chance with shield bash eviscerate combos and that would be boosted to 100% when I was under the effects of fury. The 15% extra crit damage from the precision banner made it do burst that was good enough to bring down targets my friend had already weakened.

You also don’t hold the banners often. We would run to the next point, pop the fury from the precision banner, then drop and begin fighting. The only time I’d pick them up again after a fight began was to use the fury skill on the precision banner so I could gurantee an eviscerate critical.

I tried using banner warrior in PvP, but it was too difficult to keep all the banners where my team mates were, so I asked a friend to work with me and we syergized our builds. We stuck together as much as possible during all the matches we played and I carried one banner while he carried the other.

I ran the banner warrior build while my friend ran critical flamethrower boon engineer. I used the healing banner for the +10% boon duration and extra healing and the precision banner for the slightly higher critical chance and +15% critical damage. The double stack swiftness from both the banner 3 skills and the 4 charge skill made us ridiculously mobile. When in combat, he was maintaining 25 stacks of might and had fury up most of the time making him put out serious sustained damage while still being very bulky. The regeneration from having two banners together gave us virtually perma regen that was pretty much unstrippable and lasted 20+ seconds after exiting the range of the banners. Team fights almost always went our way since I could easily rally downed team mates with war banner and they often ended in several enemy players getting slaughtered.

We won almost every PvP and tPvP match we played. Banners seem very strong to me, even overpowered when paired with the right build. The problem is that nobody carries them. Ever. Literally. Even when I ask people to in tPvP matches. You’d think people would be competing with each other to grab them since they’re free mobility and buffs.

So I’m curious, what’s your opinion on banners? I’m wondering how viable they’d be in true organized PvP. Two banner warriors each paired with DPS and then a bunker and roamer looks like it might be a fun team set up to me.

Empiren.6401:

That isn’t the problem. The problem is that it takes another 10-15 seconds of downing an already downed player who can sit on the point. Its not that I can’t damage them, its that it contest the point with no way to counter it
———————————————-

If you’d play tpvp you’d realize how broken this is. After downing a bunker only to have him remain on the point regardless of any action the player could take to prevent that.
———————-

Again, downed state SHOULD NOT CONTEST THE POINT.

MaXi.3642:

ele and thief are 2 profession with lowest hp, ofc they need just a lil bit more mobility/survival oriented downed state…

as devs said, you must look at it from a team view, not from your own selfish view… from team view, thief and ele are useless in downed state, they just can evade 1 stomp and get a bit away from that place… but engineer got pull, which can save him or even his mate, next is aoe pushback, very good for team if you last on ground long enough… guardian even better, aoe pushback imediately after downed… etc… this is team game, not 1v1, some downed states are better then other in one aspect, but not in another aspect…

Actually this is the team view. If you play tpvp you’d realize how utterly broken it is when an ele sits on a point after its downed, especially annoying when he can just sit there till his teamates come help after and you couldn’t fully cap the point.

Again, shouldn’t contest the point. I have no problem with mist form, its that it hinder competitive play.

I’d like to point out that downed players can still be knocked back.

I’ve also played tPvP and I’ve never had any problems with players preventing captures for long periods of time. I always knock them back or snare them to keep them off the control point until they’re nuetralized and then kill them for five points, or save the control skills and knock them off the point just before downing them. Eles aren’t hard to deal with either since you can take them out pretty quickly with just auto-attacks and they don’t block capture when they go into mist form.

Either way, getting downed on the point while solo generally isn’t good strategy anyways. Best thing to do while alone is to delay the capture as long as possible and then run away, forcing them to choose between capping the point and chasing you. Only time you want to get downed on the point is to delay for a few precious seconds for your team mates to come help (and even then you’re unlikely to survive), otherwise any good team will finish you off in less than 10 seconds making up for the extra time.

Those screen shots prove the backstab damage thing, I’ll give you that, but I meant screen shots that would make a good argument for the change you’re suggesting. I don’t really feel like spending time testing, taking screen shots, etc. and if you don’t want to either, then let’s just agree to disagree.

Dual.8953:

/looks

Backstab
-403 (front)
-806 (back)

Triple Chop
-(x3) 858

Sheesh.

This is a good point in my opinion. One of the thief’s strengths is that they can do damage in single strikes while other classes, like the warrior, need multiple hits to deal damage. If thief unstealthed when they failed a sneak attack, using a single block attack or a one blind would be all it would take to nullify all the damage while doing the same to a warrior would only nullify one strike. So it kind of makes sense that you would need to use multiple defensive skills and abilities to dodge the stab. But in the end, you really need to look at the thief and all the other classes as a whole rather than a few skills.

bhagwad.4281:

A backstab can hit a light armored class for 14k damage. So it’s just plain wrong to say that the damage is low. Let me know if you want screenshots.

Go ahead. Like I said, make an argument. Be sure to provide some trait and gear info though and not just damage numbers.

bhagwad.4281:

I thought you’d say that. And my response is my post is not just about BS. It’s about any stealth skill like Sneak Attack (which is also ranged).

Btw, saying you have to pull of multiple backstabs to skill someone assumes you’re relying on just one skill to down a person. I think most thieves are more skilled than that.

Ugh, now you’re just going in circles. I’m done here unless you can make a more convincing argument other than you can “spam” stealth skills and that stealth skills deal “massive damage”. If it’s not giving thieves OP damage potential or OP defense penetration, then a nerf isn’t necessary.

By the way, I was not implying that I only use backstab as my source of damage, I was implying that Killshot can potentially one shot a light armor class while backstab cannot, but I get the impression that you think a backstab can be a near one shot kill since you seem to be convinced it does SO much damage.

bhagwad.4281:

Let me replace “back stab” will killshot and see how it sounds:

I am talking purely in terms of balance. What is considered skillful or unskillful is irrelevant here. As of right now, I can killshot to use up your block or to get rid of blindness on myself and then I can killshot again for damage. What is game breaking about that? It does not deserve the nerf you’re suggesting unless it makes my damage out put so great that it’s over powered.

Doesn’t work no? I mean even killshot being blocked has a CD. If you’re ok with steal skills having CDs, then we’ve found our solution!

That’s a bad example. Kill shot is a ranged attack, it doesn’t have to hit their back, and back stab only deals 2/3s the base damage that kill shot does. Rifles also deal 980-1200 damage while daggers do only 920-980. On top of all that, if the warrior has Attack of Opportunity they’ll likely inflict 10% more damage. You need to pull off multiple back stabs to kill someone, it is no where near comparable to kill shot.

bhagwad.4281:

ninja.4139:

bhagwad.4281:

ninja.4139:

Why shouldn’t I be able to break your block?

I’m sorry, but what exactly are you suggesting? You want to break my block? Meaning what?

Back stab once using up your single block skill and then stabbing again to damage you.

Ok…and your point is what? That I use a skill to counter you and then you get to use the same skill immediately again whereas mine goes to cooldown.

I don’t understand – are you supporting this, defending this, or saying you don’t care?

I am talking purely in terms of balance. What is considered skillful or unskillful is irrelevant here. As of right now, I can back stab to use up your block or to get rid of blindness on myself and then I can back stab again for damage. What is game breaking about that? It does not deserve the nerf you’re suggesting unless it makes my damage out put so great that it’s over powered.

bhagwad.4281:

ninja.4139:

Why shouldn’t I be able to break your block?

I’m sorry, but what exactly are you suggesting? You want to break my block? Meaning what?

Back stab once using up your single block skill and then stabbing again to damage you.

bhagwad.4281:

ninja.4139:

Even the best thieves don’t land every single back stab on the first try.

Should they be guaranteed that it lands? If the opponent generates a counter, I think we all agree that it shouldn’t land no?

Why shouldn’t I be able to break your block? Does it really increase my damage so much that it makes me over powered? If it doesn’t make me overpowered, then it doesn’t deserve a nerf.

bhagwad.4281:

My main point is about any stealth attack not just backstab. In any case, if you say that kill shot has the advantage of being ranged, I say BS has the advantage of the thief being in stealth! As an opponent, I’ll take the former over the latter any day. As would anyone else I’m sure.

I’m with Grimwolf in that we’re just arguing semantics at this point. So let’s get back to the heart of this: why do thieves deserve a change that will overall make them weaker? Whether or not something takes skill doesn’t matter here, this is in terms of balance. Even the best thieves don’t land every single back stab on the first try.

bhagwad.4281:

100b, pistol whip and blurred frenzy are all counterable by the fact that you can see them coming. You don’t have to guess or get lucky. When that “one hit” is from stealth and deals massive damage, then it’s not unreasonable to ask that it not be spammable.

You don’t see warriors complaining that kill shot can be blocked and go to CD now do you? Because it’s not reasonable to expect otherwise.

All of those have added effects that make them useful though, and Kill shot has the advantage of being ranged. All backstab does is deal damage, and only if it hits the opponent’s back. And again, backstab doesn’t deal that much damage. Death blossom deals more damage if the bleeds aren’t removed in a timely fashion and you can deal almost as much just from a full auto-attack combo.

bhagwad.4281:

A “block next attack” skill is a hard counter to any other single hit skill in the game. Why should BS (or any stealth skill) be any different? You can’t just wave it away and say “use something else!”. Why should I?

Or take a skill that gives you 2 secs of invulnerability that roots you to the ground. You save up for it to prevent a backstab, you see 4 or 5 “invulnerable” messages pop up but as soon as it’s over, you get hit. You saved and blew your CD for nothing with no benefit.

Landing a BS this way takes no skill. Weed out the spammers and make the thief play smartly by timing stealth and backstab when the opponent is vulnerable…like all the rest of us do. For example, I don’t MOA a guardian when he has aegis up. You can’t just spam skills and land them with no downside. Doesn’t work that way.

Spamming backstab can already be punishing since it makes it more likely you’ll just stab them in the face instead. People don’t just sit there when they realize you’re behind them, they’re still actively trying to avoid you. And the block skills are still useful. You can use the block and then dodge roll as soon as you see a blocked attack. You can dodge roll out of the evasion skill too to buy even more time. It makes sense in a one on one situation, but still, I feel this would just make it too punishing for thieves in a group fight when he’s getting attacked by two or three people at once. Not to mention latency (generally that’s only when you’re chasing someone thats running from you though).

bhagwad.4281:

Umm…yeah. If your opponent has the presence of mind to save a block skill till you stealth, then you were outplayed. I’m astonished that you seem to think you have a god given right to land a backstab regardless of counters the opponent throws up.

You should be saving the block skill for a heart seeker, a CnD, or a death blossom, and blocking is not the only counter and was never intended to be a hard counter to back stab. It’s already easy enough to stop a back stab with skills like Updraft and Illusionary Wave or just avoid it completely with blink, lightning flash, and other step skills.

Or you could just, you know, not leave your back open to them? That works for all professions.

As people have already pointed out, back stab really doesn’t do that much damage unless you’re a glass cannon. I also disagree with people who are saying blocking a backstab is skillful. It’s completely telegraphed by their disappearing in stealth so it’s not hard to see coming. Aegis is the big one though, not just because of it’s virtually random nature, but also because it lasts 5 seconds when the virtue is used, longer than any stealth skill lasts outside of shadow refuge, even with the +1 second from the trait. So if a guardian uses the aegis virtue, you’re better off just popping out of stealth with a death blossom or waiting nearby to begin auto attacking because there’s nothing else you can do. Most of the block skills last about 2 seconds, some even more, so all you would have to do to not get back stabbed is dodge roll away from the thief, throw up your block, and then he only has a little under a second to get behind you and attack. Countering something by using a single ability that doesn’t even have to be that well timed isn’t my idea of skill.

Calae.1738:

For a game that hires a full time economist I’m surprised he hasn’t come up with a drainage system. The only items in the game that are destroyed are items used in mystic toilet recipes and food consumables.

Although gambling in the mystic toilet might be amusing for some people; the rest of us would like something useful instead. Food consumables provide benefits to the player and help drain items from the system. Especially in a system where people don’t change gear often.

Well, there is a system: tier promoting in the mystic forge. Problem is dust is always so much more expensive than the actual materials you’re converting and I’m going to guess that’s because you need a stack of tier 3, 4, 5, and 6 dusts to make certain legendaries. And doing tier 6 conversions? HA. Crystal dust is so expensive it renders every tier 6 conversion useless. It’s a little funny that it’s a drainage system for items that players don’t need that requires items players do need to use.

Also, part of the problem with silk and thick leather is that they’re the most common drop from pretty much any high level bag consumable. Go ahead, open up some high level bags and a guranteed half of everything you get from them will be a silk scrap or a thick leather scrap. It’s ridiculous.

vespers.1759:

picture? no? then i don’t care.

fact is thieves can run glass canon and have more survivability than any other class along with the most damage. other classes get actively punished for running glass canon because they can’t go invis and run away to compensate for high dps. if a glass of any other class gets caught unawares they die. if a thief is surprised he stealths and skips away.

thieves could take a 50% dmg reduction and they’d still be amazing. if a thief doesn’t win in a 1v1 right now they must be really bad.

also play a glass canon ranger. it’s a glass canon thief without the canon or the defense from invis.

First of all, his word isn’t any better than your picture is. We don’t know your gear, your traits, your weapons, or even your class for that matter, so neither proves anything.

Secondly, thief does not have more survivability than other classes. Stealth makes it easier to run away from a fight, but not necessarily easier to win one. While stealth is a very strong asset for thieves, their only stun breakers are roll for initiative, which has a very long recharge, and shadow step, which also has a long recharge in addition to being a rather situational skill. This can make them VERY vulnerable to stun locks. They also lack good condition removal which means they can be countered with immobilization skills and condition pressure.

The back stab can easily be avoided with the right skills and it’s completely obvious that it’s coming when they stealth. Throwing up an aegis, keeping the thief at a distance, snaring, using evasion skills, blinding, etcetera, etcetera… all good ways to prevent getting back stabbed. Thieves can quickly burn through their initiative and damage potential if you can dodge the deadliest attacks. They can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time during the beginning of a fight, but they’re not as good if it turns into a prolonged bout.

Edge.4180:

(sigh) Unpopular post time.

During GW2’s development, I used to look at those Tequatl and Shatterer event videos and the furthest thing from my mind as I watched their footage was the question of how many times I could farm them a day for rare drops. And yet, now this seems to be the only question on the minds of most players.

I agree that the huge amount of people ruins these events, but I think the problem is incentives. Right now you barely make any money just adventuring around the world, but you’re guranteed basically a 10 silver profit minimum for just 10-20 mintues of playing. The motivation to go is so great because nothing in the overworld is seemingly so profitable or so important that it can’t be put on hold to do a dragon event and you always make back the waypoint cost.

You know what would be interesting? A volcanic map with points that have fiery ground like in the grawl fractal.

What are you talking about? When did they add any new rewards? They’ve been the same since release as far as I know. And honestly, the Fiery Dragon Sword is the only good looking skin. The armor skins don’t work well with some of the races, the dwayna gloves dye too weird to be matched with armor, the flame gloves were a let down, and they totally RUINED the fell blade. Absolutely ruined it. I was really dissappointed with half the stuff.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

Schnuffles.5369:

Found a way to turn 1 skill point into 1G.

Take advantage of this crazy inflation right now while it lasts. It’s printing money for me at the moment.

1G? Seems like you found something special, usually 1 SP translates into a little less than 0.5G.
What are you going to do once you ran out of SP though? You will not be able to craft a legendary item anymore

I’ve actually been doing something similar to this with material promotion from T1 to T2. Wait for a T1 to drop around 10c and its corressponding T2 to raise to around 1s, buy up a bunch of T1s and sell the promoted T2s off for about a 8-12s profit per philosopher stone used. Problem I’ve been seeing though is that if you order a huge bulk of T1s you can be quickly over cut by people that are buying them for actual crafting, so it’s slow since I’ve been trying to be careful not to cause a significant price increase.

It’s given me money to experiment with other options in the TP though. So far, I haven’t found anything besides material promotion that’s been profitable.

Do you guys think these might be worth a buy? It’s only 1c above vendor value and has virtually never risen above that price. The only thing I’d imagine arena net doing is decreasing their drop or salvage rate.

What’s Arena net’s stance on this? I haven’t been able to complete it for 2 days now because there have been invaders teleporting allies to the battle pit using mesmer portals and then camping there.

Are they going to limit the portals? Being able to bypass the entire puzzle is border line exploiting.

Is it just me, or is there an absolutely OBSCENE amount of inquest guarding the generators? It seemed absolutely impossible even though I was 9 levels about the recommended level. I tried to use shadow assault to evade as many attacks as possible, but as soon as I ran out of initiative I’d get stun locked and killed before I could use my healing skill. It would be nice if they could tone it down a bit.

I noticed that the PvP weapon vendor sells Steady PvP weapons, but they do drastically less damage. What exactly are they supposed to be used for? Is there any point to them?

I agree that it’s been very annoying, but there still needs to be gold sinks. What would really make me happy is if waypoint prices were adjusted reletive to the nearest city. (i.e. teleporting to a point in wayfarer foot hills would cost the same amount as teleporting to it from Hoelbrak) I don’t want to have to endure three loading screens to travel to a waypoint near a different home city just to pay a lower price. It’s also makes me feel like I’m being an inconveinance when I have a friend that I want to meet up with and he’s waiting on me as I go through the different way points.

Right now it feels more like a bugeting chore rather than a gold sink. I shouldn’t have to pay more money just to have a shorter load screen.

Yeah, but MY satisfaction matters too. I don’t want my connection slowing down because I’m seeding a bunch of people. If it was made optional then you’d have hardly any seeders.

Gryphon.2875:

Well, it was used in GW1 with no issues in PvP or PvE. It’s still targeting the area, not the person. In GW1, you could get targeted in PvP by a mouse-less AoE and you simply leave the target area, same as with the mouse effect. And in GW2, you can dodge

Skills in GW1 were designed from the ground up to be used like that. AoE skills in GW2 were not, both in terms of mechanics and balance. When I say mechanics, I’m referring to how they are used, not how they work. See shadow shot for an example.

LionellSK.9176:

And, please don’t say that those people should have thought about that beforehand. The option was in GW1, so it’s a logical assumption that it would have been in GW2 before they made the purchase.

There was no “option” in GW1. All AoE’s were either created at your character or at a target and did not have to be aimed. It wouldn’t be logical to assume there’d be some option.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for PvE it would be a terrible idea for PvP.

First of all for PvP this would offer players using certain builds a large advantage, could potentially create imbalances, and would break certain skills. Characters specializing in AoE would become much more mobile since they would gain the ability to strafe and turn their camera while still being able to use AoE attacks. Using static field on a moving target would be near guranteed to cause a quick and unexpected stun since it would be placed with the edge near the moving player. Shadow shot and shadow step would become amazing gap closers (along with a source of blind for shadow shot) but both could no longer be used as a form of mobility. AoE enemy targeting would also enable you to do serious and sudden AoE damage with the right skills combined with quickness. Snaring somebody and then dropping an AoE on them would also become much easier and allow you to get in a few extra hits before they can move again.

I could name more issues, but I think it’s obvious at this point that there’s no way you could implement this in PvP without a serious overhaul of all sorts of things. These also apply to PvE, but are less of an issue. The bigger issues for PvE would be line of sight (especially WvW) and the fact that some builds will become much more simple and effective to use. Having AoEs created at the targets location could possibly allow you to drop AoE attacks on ledges where it normally wouldn’t be possible, such as past the edges of a keep wall in WvW. Some builds may become more effective with enemy AoE targeting, such as grenade engineer, while it could hurt builds that use a mix of AoE that would be good with targeting and AoE that would be bad with targeting. Essentially, AoE targeting would become a factor in creating and determining the effectiveness of a build, which will be unfair to players who feel targeting is more fun.

Basically, everything in the game was built with ground targeting in mind, skills were balanced with ground targeting in mind, and you can’t change that without breaking everything.

I spend at least half of my time during crafting running back and forth between the trader and the crafting table. It’s especially annoying when I’m one or two levels from getting new recipes and I can’t predict how many of an item I’ll need to get enough experience. Being able to pick up items I’ve bought from the auction house at the crafting table would make crafting much less grindy and much more enjoyable.