Guild Wars 2

#1: More involvement in class balance.
#2: Swimsuits.
#3: More stupid fun PVP and WvW maps and modes.
#4: Procedurely and randomly generated dungeon..

Sarie.1630:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

experience gain?

It’s quite interesting that you pick up on Experience Gain. You listed questions you’re always being asked. One I am always asked is “what’s the fastest way to level up?”. One week later, by the same person, I’ll be asked the same thing, then again after another week, and again, and again. Each time that player might have only increased 2 levels, or not at all. I’ve never considered GW2 to be a game that you need to rush to L80 for as conventional leveling through maps, story, and dynamic events is much more enjoyable than any other MMO I’ve played. As such, I’ve never cared what the fastest way to level up is – I’ve done whatever I enjoyed

This reminds me of the n00b train days in RS. Of course, the question in that game was more of a “how do I gain money?” thing. The game has a thriving trade market where materials are gathered, bought, and sold en mass, but whenever I’d tell players to gather materials and sell them to other players, it just didn’t “click” with them. So, on a daily basis, I’d get asked “how do I make money!?”. The scary part was, that these guys would tell other people to just ask Blood, so I’d get random n00bs I never met asking me stupid questions, like how to win fights.

The defining feature of these players were their young age. Many of them were elementry school kids, and thus didn’t have a spirit of independence. So, they’d go in game and find the first person they latched on, and were too attention deficit to remember anything other than how to beg for money. It was a strange thing where, for some reason, people couldn’t pick up on the whole “kill cows for leather, sell leather” thing. I called it “n00b train” because they would use the follow command, and in one instance I had 3 people following behind me.

This is, in part, why I think a game manual isn’t a sufficient on its own. It is also one of the reasons why I think color coded combo fields are a good idea, enemies should utilize field combos starting at the mid 20s, and there should be instanced tutorial missions, probably part of the personal story or living story. The ideal situation would be that, as a player plays through the game, they would pick up on these not-so-subtle mechanics in the game, either by being shown through NPCs or by being subject to them via enemies. Then, when a player gets to later levels, the game mechanics aren’t so much an encyclopedia of knowledge they have to read up on, but second nature.

Anyway, the thing with experience gain in this game is that, while it is really easy to gain experience via crafting, gathering, exploration, dynamic events, etc, a lot of people come from a different gaming background. In this different background, killing the same 3 mobs for hours on end is the only way to level. These players need to actually be told that “Yeah, pretty much everything you do in game gives experience, especially exploration, so just go nuts”. Not only for better player retention, but also because if all of our teaching tools are scattered about the open world, then players need to actually see them to learn from them.

God Of Mustard.6354:

Abridged to save space

#1: They wouldn’t be sad if people weren’t being so retentive over the issue. Quality of life aside, there is a very strong anti-elitism presence in the game, and without proper population policing tools, what option is there other than to make them feel as unwelcome as possible? As far as they consider it, their sabotage is done for the greater good of the game. Without any additional principles to guide them, you’ll see exactly how far your standard man is willing to negotiate with the devil.

#2: Kicking for forming requirements in groups and standard expectations when entering a group environment have very little to do with each other. You have to understand, for many people the prospect of a full zerk party has absolutely no qualitative meaning, and thus garners no more respect than writing in a bathroom stall.

#3: This doesn’t have to deal with being carried at all. Those players can be fully self sufficient in their gear choice, but not self sufficient in others. It is counterproductive to make someone wear armor that they can’t function in, because then is when they truly have to be carried.

#4: If they differ in aspects, then they aren’t the same. There again, is a difference here, where one joins with the sole expectation to learn to not be carried. Temporary sacrifice for the greater good. Besides, forming a learning dungeon party doesn’t work, because then they’ll just get a bunch of other people who don’t know what to do, and they’ll learn nothing from their deaths. It is that strange kafkaesque paradox where, to learn to run dungeons in zerker gear, you have to already be able to run dungeons in zerker gear.

#5: As much as I wish this were rare, I find out surprisingly often that it isn’t. GW2 is a multi-national game filled with all levels of devotion to the game. Not everyone is going to pass far enough into the culture of the game and through the language barrier to know that “zerk” means berserker gear, or that “GC” means berserker gear.

Your prospects on diagnosing the problem are dubious at best. When the issue is “why do people join up zerk groups but not in zerk”, this can only be the case when said group is already advertised as “zerk”. If it is not labeled as such, then it is not such. To have elaborate expectations about a party, but don’t indicate or demand these expectations is to be truly irrational.

Likewise, I myself am a zerk player, and I still denounce the evils of elitism regularly. This is because I understand that other people will play differently, and my higher risk for performance is an unnecessary choice that I have made.

Just remember: Luck is for other people.

Personally I’m all for stupid fun maps. Not everything has to be no items, fox only, final destination. Even if UW combat isn’t the main focus of balance, I would still like to see it around.

I’m fairly new to ranger, but I have my own thoughts.

#1: Our Pets need innate condition damage. When conditions were changed, this had the unfortunate result of making all conditions inflicted by the pet severely kitten and utterly useless.

#2: Our pets need a dodge command that we control somehow. Easiest method would to just make it so when we dodge (not skill dodge, but just regular ole dodge), our pet dodges along with us.

Mostly I use Super Veggie Pizza. Although I have considered using Loaf of Saffron Bread on my Engineer to get ridiculous damage resistance when stunned.

The roles in GW2 exist. They’re just not as clearly defined and hard limited by stats like they are in other MMOs:

The Might/Fury stacker: given to warriors and eles.
Projectile reflecter/stopper: Most classes, but mesmer/guard/engi are best
Cleanser: Engi, Guard, Mesmer
Stealther: Engi, Thief
Blind Spammer: Necro, Thief, Engi, and sometimes guard
Defiance Stripper: Mesmer, Thief

And that is only a generalized overlook on what the classes can do. Many of them do so much more than that, but don’t classify as a “build” because of how unique it is. For example, Ele’s Frost Bow is a great stun + burst weapon, Mesmer portals are a great movement technique in the right spot, many of these builds will stack other things like protection, swiftness, and stability.

There’s really only two “roles” that are limited by the gear you choose.

Tanker: This one is technically an asterisk, because many thieves can distract enemies with evades endlessly, as well as many guards and mesmers can block attacks. Also the necro and warrior have so much bulk and sustain that they can face tank many champions, even in glass cannon gear.

Healer: Also an asterisk. Healing while players are still standing requires the healing power stat. But, if a player goes down, you can quickly bring them back up regardless of your stat set.

Overall I find the old holy trinity to be extremely boring. It is a system of negatives: you as a player are an incomplete unit that is hampered by weaknesses which prevent you from performing by yourself. You are good at one thing, and horrible at two things, leaving you relatively incompetent. The whole system exists to simplify the effective healing vs. effective damage formula, and it isn’t that fun at all. I can see no reason why the system has to be so restraining.

Rukh.9287:

Right off this whole thing made me think of Dark Souls/ Dark Souls II, what people often consider a decently challenging game. Quite a lot harder, per enemy, than GW2, or most MMOs. What makes it so satisfying though is you know up front it’s going to be hard, and generally you can tell what you did wrong when you die. That also means you can work on getting better and its immensely satisfying when you do.

Its sort of the opposite of how GW2 is being described here. Hopefully the dev team spent all their time off playing Dark Souls 2. :P

Dark Souls has good conveyance in that matter. I do think about this a lot, and I think Dark Souls can afford to be harsher because it is more straightforward.

I remember playing it myself, for the first time. After the basic tutorial teaching controls, everything was pretty simple from there. Figuring out parry times was a real pain, but most of the learning that had to be done in the game was based around learning how your weapon moved, and learning how enemies moved. Extra credits would describe this system as simple, but deep. It could be reduced to “don’t get hit, hit it until it dies”, and the variety of ranges, windups, aftercasts, momentum, and endurance management meant that there was a million ways to “don’t get hit, hit it until it dies”.

But it was essentially one concept. The most complicated thing was the poise/encumbrance mechanics. GW2, however, has equations and inter-class mechanics, along with more cluttered and faster paced combat. There are a lot more unique forms of support, and more styles of play.

There’s something I say a lot, and I’d like it to be a catchphrase:

“Only bad groups skip Kholer”

It is a reference to how in AC explore, many people will skip Kholer claiming him to be too hard and take too long and not have any rewards and stuff. The ironic part being that the fastest runs I’ve ever done in AC explore never skipped Kholer. Instead, we all ran up and bowled Kholer right over like he was nothing then marched on, reward chest in hand and waypoint at our backs.

It is this path of least resistance mindset that annoys me. Every time a group tries to do something like that it fails miserably or takes so long it would’ve been better to just straight up fight. After the group spends time skipping “trash mobs” when someone inevitably dies they become unable to run past the enemies by themselves, and we have to wait 10 minutes while the same player dies again and again to get to where everyone is. Every time we go to use a safe spot against a boss the boss just takes half the group out and then the safe spot doesn’t even work most of the time. Every time we go to take a short cut, 4 out of 5 players die from fall damage or the enemies at the end of that fall. Every time some group finds a shortcut which skips half the map they don’t bother telling me, so when I read story mode or fall behind because I’ve been killed by one of the 12 enemies we’re running past, they end up half way through the map and complain every time they gotta show someone how they got there.

It gets kind of sickening after awhile. It is rare to see any two groups do the same thing twice, so with each group everyone is a n00b to whatever random strategy the group leader and his friend employ. So I spend time trying to find a safespot I’ve never heard of which is “over there” (literally all the direction I was given), don’t stand in the exact spot causing the boss to reset or wipe the tightly clustered team with an AoE. Somehow, things became more complicated and yet less effective than just running up, killing the troublesome pests, then moving on.

It is a really unfortunate thing that people want things to be easy to get, yet rewarding and “valuable”, and they want things to be challenging and yet shy away from any difficulty that presents itself.

Sometimes I use swiftness. On my female human/norn I don’t always, because I think their jogging animation is hotter at base speed.

The reason why the engineer forum is so positive is because the engineer is the second best class in the game. While not as potent as the elementalist, it is far more diverse. This leads to a situation that is completely unique as far as professions go: Whatever the problem is or whatever the situation demands, the engineer has the tools for the job.

The other class forums are so embittered because they’re impotent. Most classes (even the elementalist) are lacking some kind of crucial tool, and when a situation arises where that tool is necessary they get pounded. Necromancer has little to no group utility and poorly scaling personal survival, rangers are stuck with pets and have minimal group buffs and support, thieves are wholly reliant on stealth and delayed skill evades to survive, mesmers DPS is unreliable and generally low sustained with mostly niche support utilities, Guardians have low DPS with bad ranged options and no escapes, Ele’s have no boon hate and are really frail. I don’t know what warriors have. This is a most generalized version, but you get the jist: there’s a bunch of things that these classes don’t do, and it comes back to bite them in the butt. It is understandable why they’re sore.

But the engineer doesn’t have that problem. Given time to think and a little problem solving, there is no issue an Engineer can’t overcome. Engi’s a chill because of this.

Ayrilana.1396:

Slowpokeking.8720:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m a bit conflicted about the update myself.

On the one hand, I enjoyed the thrill of the difficulty. A successful run truly felt like an achievement. It wasn’t impossible by any stretch. you just needed everybody on the same page. The “high DPS, pay attention” page. but once you got that organization together, it was beautiful.

On the other hand, my complaint is in essence that more people get to do the event successfully and more frequently. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. I’ve been on enough pug runs to know that getting a successful kill out of randoms was incredibly tough, and now more people get to do it.

The real question I have is this: It that O.K.? My general experience with randoms is that they are hard because they are undergeared, poorly built, and don’t listen. I’ve been lobbying for a general increase in difficulty because faceroll easy is boring and doesn’t hold interest. King of the Jungle was one of those events. You had to try to beat it.

Go to raid if you want challenge.

And for those that like challenges that require groups larger than 10 players?

Guys, it isn’t about whether I want to be challenged. It is about whether this event should be challenging or not.

Stx.4857:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The biggest problem is that Anet’s philosophy on class design is “PVP only, PVE is easy enough that everyone can do it”. And that is true to a certain extent, but when you get into all of the other little factors, such as the shiny-oriented mindset that most players have, things start to fall apart.

Personally, I’ve only encountered the whole clkittene thing once. Most of what I see is build hate and player hate, so as a whole I don’t think classes have much of an issue.

The ironic thing is, sPVP is the one that is falling apart due to viability issues.

Thank you for a helpful reply. I feel that it really does have to do with classes, in this very thread which isnt very big, there are already two examples of how certain classes are thought of as inferior.

I do think necromancers are inferior as well. I’ve played an engineer, thief, and necro in dungeons, and the necro always feels like it is just dragging along ,despite going for full berserker. The thing is, you can take 5 apothecary gear necros and complete nearly every path of every dungeon, hence Anets reluctance to give a darn about the issue. All that said, there are still times I want to play a necromancer. I hate the feeling of inferiority I have while doing so.

Don’t take the dungeon forums as a representative sample. The people here aren’t like in the game, and frankly aren’t like the other forums either.

Vayne.8563:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

rebellion.2473:

Hello.
As i noticed,some use forums as a tool for negative speech,unconstructive “feedback”,and worst of all,political and ideological beliefs

Please try not to post such stuff,it hurts us as community and Anet devs.

I can’t help but think that this itself is an ideological belief Particularly an extension of the moral relativistic duty that sees expression of “ideology” of any kind (though usually it is targeted against one side) as wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it should be censured. Therein lies a cruel irony. Telling other people not to express their beliefs is itself a belief that is being expressed.

Lesson of the day: nobody who actually believes something will call it a “belief”. They refer to it, both outwardly and inwardly, as fact. So really, you’re telling everybody not to express facts that are inconvenient for Anet, and likely yourself.

I refer to my beliefs as beliefs all the time.

You stated that as a matter of fact. >.>

Anyway, as much as I’d hate to say it, social issues make it into GW2 all of the time. It is actually quite rare for a work of fiction to not be some type of allegory or metaphor or platform for the ideals of the person making it. This is because the beliefs of a person are not “beliefs”, they are the facts to that person. So when they write the story, the evils of an overarching government play out as seamlessly as gravity.

The world created by Anet in itself expresses a set of worldviews, and often times acts as a platform for which to express their views. This isn’t just true on a story level, but on a mechanical level:

#1: GW2 classes were designed initially so that any class could fulfill any role, letting you play how you want. Every player was their own tank/heal/dps.
#2: The reward structure for most of the game was initially designed to be equally rewarding regardless of what level you were, where you played, and what you did. Drops and rewards were largely homogenized throughout the game to make sure whatever you do is equally rewarding.
#3: PVP was standardized to prevent inequality outside gains through any method.
#4: The gear prefixes were balanced in such a way that you could complete content wearing any kind of tier appropriate armor you wanted.
#5: The content was initially designed so that any grouping of 5 classes could complete it, letting you play with whomever you want.
#6: Exotic gear, the maximum gear, was set as both the standard and the cap, and made easily obtainable, making it so vast disparities in wealth didn’t matter.

Now, lets break it down to the ideals that found these decisions:

#1: Everyone should get to be who they want
#2: Because all “who’s” are (or should) end up equal
#3: You cannot be unequal in any way
#4: No matter how it is that you play
#5: And everybody should play with everybody else, no judgements.
#6: And it doesn’t matter how rich you are or where you come from (cash to gem conversion), everyone peaks at the same place in the end.

Basically the game was initially designed to be a hippy dream. It both embodied a lot of far-left ideals, as well as was made to be counter-culturally designed against the current MMO establishment. Now, these design decisions have some failings, of which only a few I elaborate on in that link, so GW2 has moved mechanically away from how it was at launch, but the people working there haven’t moved ideologically.

Never forget: Arenanet is an ideal driven company.

Not going to lie, the only three I look forward to are Deadeye, Scourge, and Holosmith. The others…

Firebrand: Moves too slow, attacks too slow, doesn’t provide unique utility.
Soulbeast: Don’t play ranger.
Spellbreaker: Don’t play warrior.
Mirage: Nothing works, horribly flawed concept, counterintuitive mechanics.
Renegade: Wholly impotent and impractical.
Weaver: Might be fine, but not looking forward to putting in countless hours just to reach barely servicable level of familiarity with the spec.

Personally I’d say only buy the minimum spec. The Deluxe and Gold-Platter options are filled with mostly frivolous stuff. Let the whales keep the game afloat.

The most advantageous thing about the condi rev is the consistency in which it can do damage. A lot of the other classes have several variables that can backfire.

Condi Tempest is the best, assuming fire overload isn’t interrupted, you have convenient access to FGS, the boss stays in place for burning speed and flamewall, and you’re fighting enemies condensed in a small area. Mobile bosses or bosses that force interrupts, or hell even waves of adds will cause DPS to plummet.

Condi Daredevil is good, but it doesn’t scale well with numbers, the venoms are unreliable outside of raids, and the focus on using death blossom will kill you with its animation lock.

Condi Engineer suffers from the same “moving target” weakness that eles have, except the condi engineer rotation is so difficult to pull off that even in a clinical trial I can’t even break 30k DPS, let alone the mythical 34k that QT can hit.

Condi reaper gets a lot of its damage from using spin to win in an ice field, but if anyone else puts a field down first you’ll just shoot out a bunch of cleansing bolts instead.

I don’t know much about condi Berserker. But Condi Rev almost never loses its damage. Yes, enemies can wander out of the fire field from mace 2, but if the enemy is moving then torment raises in damage to compensate. The rotation is simple, the animation of mace 3 isn’t too punishing, and the skills work great against groups. In a clinical trial it doesn’t peak as high as the others, but in practice the Condi Rev is an excellent condi class.

I suppose if you read my post as a random amalgam of information in a manner other than how I wrote it and how that info pertains to other things I wrote, then yeah poison is alright because melee classes can hit for 6K, or whatever.

Anyway, to get back to the point: There is a very large difference between what a class can do, what they actually accomplish. The strengths that the OP listed, when not simply incorrect, are the kinds of things you can only pull off against noobs and the training golems. I main the engineer and necro myself, and I easily lose half of my fights because, contrary to popular belief, these classes aren’t some overpowered faceroll. Even when running condition builds, half of the opponents I end up battling have enough cleansing to wash away any damage I’d try to inflict. It is incredibly rare for me to pull off a full length fear chain (rare being I’ve only managed it once), I can’t maintain permanent poison against players because half the poison skills miss or can’t be fired off, burning takes forever to kill other players because it only stacks in duration. As a necro I get focus fired because there’s no way to defend myself. As an engineer I have to sacrifice quite a bit to accomplish a spotty vigor uptime, and half the time I just get controlled due to a lack of useful stun breakers.

On paper, an engineer/necro can do everything and anything at once while being impossible to beat. But that is only on paper. You build for everything with these classes, and you’ll end up accomplishing nothing. And BTW, mesmers have a whole lot more access to confusion than engineers do. This is especially true, since mesmers don’t have to sacrifice utilities to inflict confusion.

What I would define as oppressive would be any mechanic that exists to discourage melee combat overall. Thus, where the difficulty in removing stacking is. With small bosses we get players standing on each other by default. It is difficult to come up with an option where all the players can melee an enemy, but not be standing on top of each other while they do it. It is also difficult to do this in a non-punishing manner. Heck, even the ideas of player based damage auras end up discouraging at least one player from meleeing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Maybe I don’t often repeat the on-farm dungeons that everyone seems to base their comments against stacking on. My experience in dungeons has been that while there are similarities in mob design, and some dungeon bosses seem like big sacks of health that don’t do much, there are other bosses that punish the mindless stacking that gets folks upset. So, I’m not sure it’s fair to base an evaluation of stacking on bosses with simple AI or who lack AoE — because they aren’t all that way.

That’s not to say that AI in general couldn’t use improvement. However, taking away existing farm paths or turning them into harder paths that get under-utilized (TA AP, I’m looking at you) is not a good idea. Leave these paths alone, and generate new dungeons with different mechanics, and which might require some variety in tactics. Half the problem with dungeons is habituation anyway, so adding new paths would allow for both new challenges and new mechanics.

Stacking is an issue where it is, and not an issue where it isn’t. There is very little reason to fix stacking in places where people aren’t stacking. Abridged the quote to save space.

While TA Spider path was the least run dungeon in the game, you do bring up a conflict that exists in the game right now: drastically different scales of difficulty. Players, wanting to easily acquire money, will take the path to least resistance by default. This means that they will run paths where the simplest tactics work, and avoid places where it doesn’t.

Many game designers embrace this philosophy, and begin something that I call farm creep. Like power creep or spectacle creep, farm creep is the tendency for developers, wanting players to always like new content or always play new content, will constantly make new content that has more and higher rewards than ever before. When this is done over and over again, you end up with a great divide between rewards of different content. This, of course, leads to a lack of diversity in gameplay and massive inflation.

Excluding content en masse from tweaks in enemy behavior doesn’t solve the problems that stacking causes. Instead, this just causes a new problem of difficulty shock in new content. Thus, to resolve the issue, the changes need to be done on a nearly global scale to the game. And yes, by making things in the game require more actions and more coordination, the game will become more difficult overall.

What must also be stated is that I am not against raising rewards to compensate for this difficulty. In fact, that seems like a proper way to balance the discouragement of difficulty with the incentive of monetary compensation.

Although other classes can do a single task better, I find that most classes can’t do as many tasks as the engineer can.

Need a healer? Engineer with healing turret + elixir gun gives perma regen and frequent AoE heals, and elixir R is a slightly delayed AoE res.

Need AoE stealth? Engineer’s have smoke fields and a ton of blast finishers, letting them stealth a whole group for longer than shadow refuge.

Need condition cleaning? Engineer’s get cleaning either with the elixir traits, elixir C + R, the healing turret, or the elixir gun.

Need a tank or need to reflect projectiles? Engineer’s get elixir U for reflection or destruction, Magnetic Shield and Kit Refinement for reflection, Gear Shield and Static Shield block things, Elixir S straight up avoids things, and they also have plenty of AoE blinds in the pistol, grenade kit, bomb kit, and flame turret.

Need a ton of control? Engineer again, who can stack immobilize incredibly well with the net turret, as well as knockdown with the rocket turret, pull with the tool kit, knock back with the bomb kit and mine kit and rifle and nearly every turret with the right traits, stun and daze and knockback with the shield, chill for long duration with grenades, and stun with the supply crate, as well as anything I have forgotten to mention.

Need a lot of AoE damage? Well, the engineer is your man again, since coated bullets can hit up to 25 times with the pistol’s auto attack, grenades hit 15 times, the bomb kit hits 5 times but for high direct damage, the rifle pierces and also has high damage from jump shot and blunderbuss, the flamethrower procs conditions and stacks might like there’s no tomorrow, and the rocket + flame + thumper turrets all attack in an AoE.

Need conditions? Engineer is your man again, being the only class that has access to all 4 damaging conditions (confusion, poison, bleed, burn) as well as good vulnerability stacking and consistent weakness stacking with the elixir gun.

Need boons? The engineer again gives permanent regen to any party he’s on with the healing turret, gives might to the group with the right traits, and also randomly gives stability, stealth, fury, swiftness, protection, vigor, and retaliation to the group they travel with.

And all this, healing and blocking and reflecting and tanking and buffing and cleansing and controlling, is all done so easily on one class. Arguably the engineer is the best at one thing: control. Whenever I am playing my engineer, I never have any worries about group composition lacking a certain role or utility because as an engineer, I have that role or utility already. There is seldom a problem that cannot be solved with the large bag of gimmicks that an engineer possesses. IMHO if engineers had high single target damage, then there wouldn’t be much of a reason to play a class other than an engineer.

My best piece of advice to all aspiring engineers out there is to use your head, and change utilities and equipment according to what is needed. Any engineer that cookie-cutter’s themselves is severely limiting their strength.

I’m surprised people are so adverse to PVP. Back in games where you lost everything on you and every cent you ever made, it made sense to hate PVP, but in these newer games where your punishment is the very tiny repair fee, I just don’t quite get it. People have to change their mindset and not cry out “Oh why me?” any time someone on another server picks a fight.

If I remember correctly, it wasn’t just thieves, either. All blind fields except well of darkness received this treatment.

It doesn’t have to be manual OR action based tutorial. You can have both. In fact, it is preferable to have the manual for deeper information, but for tutorial missions to have the basics.

My idea for teaching the players things would involve 3 things:

#1: A text that says what something is.
#2: NPCs that performs unsaid actions alongside of the players
#3: A voiceover explaining the concept that is being taught.

Combined with a manual, this will give players a resource to which they can defer, should they forget what is being taught. This would take place in an instanced mission based on class, and the more complex concepts would be taught at later levels. Should a class lack something from the lesson, an environmental weapon can be used to provide anything that is needed.

The goal being to move the game concepts from “teaching” mode to “exploration” mode. Once a player understands a combo field (personally, I’d use smoke for the tutorial, since stealth is pretty big), then it isn’t too much of a hop before the player starts experimenting with their own fields and finishers. Then, the player isn’t trying to memorize for at test or a lecture, but just trying to see what happens when a particular attack hits a particular field. And thus, by seeing it happen, they learn what happens.

It isn’t necessary to teach a player about EVERY class, or about all currently used team tactics. It is only important to teach players the fundamentals, and then when they see those tactics they’ll understand why players do what they do. Of course, some subjects such as experience gain don’t need an instanced mission to teach.

The means of play are important, though. If you just say “push V to dodge”, then players aren’t learning something. It is important to teach that dodging, blocking, reflecting, and invulnerability are meant to be an active form of defense, and not to rely on passive stats like other MMOs do.

Not knowing that those attacks were reflectable is understandable. I didn’t even know that.

However… due to how incredibly useful I’ve found reflects to be in PVE and PVP (engineer and mesmer both have plenty of them), Wall of Reflection has earned a permanent spot on my utility bar until I memorize exactly where it is needed and where it isn’t. Why anyone would refuse to use Wall of Reflect in a spot where it is useful is beyond me.

“Hey, you know there’s this skill that protects everyone while putting own a light field and doing a crap-ton of damage to enemies?”
“I don’t want to use that skill.”
“…why not?”

This is how it works with basically every weapon evade. It’s been a problem with sword for awhile.

This is, unfortunately, intended. The devs don’t want players canceling attacks to boost DPS, so they require the entire animation to finish first. My advice is to keep at least one regular dodge in reserve, as those can cancel an attack.

First playthough I did was on a mesmer, and the whole time I kept wishing I was on my engi/thief/necro.

The reason is simple: the group I had was bad at pulling the holos, and unfortunately they were too far away to focus pull. However, thief/necro/engineer all have a 1200 range direct pull that can move the holo’s across the map very easily.

The thief is particularly notable, due to its ability to spam blind fields. Then, when you get ambushed by a bunch of nightmare hounds, instead of the group wiping the hounds flail helplessly at open air. The slick and sparki fight is pretty simple: go dagger/dagger, and then you can backstab the two all day for massive damage. Slick can’t even defend himself at close range, and plus stealing from them keeps getting you elixir of Heroes, so you have invincibility periods where you can just go meshugga. That only matters for sparki, though. The oozes weren’t a problem either: one off-hand pistol and you can blind them over and over again while using smoke screen and devourer venom to hold off the elementals. The limitless dodging came in handy while face tanking spur and the clockheart, and should the clockheart get off its’ mega attack, you can just spam disabling shot to avoid every attack.

As a mesmer, I felt like little more than a damage dealer. The biggest advantage being that I could maintain distance from holo’s while they blew up generator. I didn’t find wardens or feedback nearly as useful against sparki and slick, since they would usually get off one combination before dying, and frequently they would end up distracting the ooze from eating oil. The thief did more damage, though, hitting for upwards to 24k with the CnD + backstab combo, and 13k a pop with Heartseeker when they were nearly dead.

I have yet to play though it with my engineer or necro, though. The advantage with the engineer is that I can dole out maximum damage at any range (again), and I’ll also have access to pulls, plenty of control, a few reflects, and also the ability to spam blast finishers in my own water field to heal up everyone from the DoTs in the area. Most importantly, I’ll have access to a better rez skill in Toss Elixir R.

The necro might be more of a problem. They don’t have anything stellar, yet they’ll still have the tools for the job: blind fields and fear + stuns for the ooze section, a whole lot of HP and life force to absorb the DoTs from slick + sparki fight, and a 1200 range pull for the holos.

You can put it into your bank and take it out on another toon.

Highlie.7641:

I’m going have to agree that acro is probably the worst trait line i have seen in awhile.

From a pvp standpoint:
What arena net failed to understand is sometimes you had to chain dodges. I’m all for active dodging but This game is flooded with AOE, High damage channel skills (Vs squishy thief’s anyway) and random proc’s. When you boil it down, thief simply lacks enough damage to down a target (s/d) when you trait Acro. You do not have enough evades to live long enough to down an opponent.

My concern mainly is that, as a defensive line, acrobatics is really poor at it. Compare it to Shadow Arts, the other defensive line.

Merciful Ambush: Has use in PVE to drop aggro of a hyper focused enemy. Thieves aren’t that bad at reviving, though, so it gets bonus points.
4/10

Concealed Defeat: Good defense trait in teams. Makes stomping harder, blocks projectiles, makes rezzing easier. Also increases deceptions, which are all really useful defensive skills for the thief.
7/10

Last Refuge: This is a mixed trait. On the one hand, it can save you. On the other hand, it can kill you.
3/10

Shadow’s Embrace: Currently bugged, but this makes an excellent condition cleanse, making the dubious task of condi pressure against a thief even more difficult.
8/10 once unbugged.

Meld With Shadows: Usually buys 33% more time in stealth. Given all of the stealth utilities in this trait line, it basically makes everything better.
7/10

Hidden Thief: This trait is a mixed bag. It conflicts with other traits, and usually you’ll just chain Cloak ’n Dagger to steal for stealth anyway. But still, not completely useless
3/10

Shadow Protector: Thieves aren’t known for their healing, but this is alright. Due to the slow nature of Shadow’s Embrace, this helps with condi damage. Also works on groups.
5/10

Leeching Venoms: This is part of the venom duo that a lot of PVE and WvW builds use. This is a solid trait overall in that it gives might for damage, leeching for damage, and also surprisingly substantial amount of healing.
8/10

Resilience of Shadows: Though the function of stealth is to avoid damage, this really helps against those random cleaves that people throw out when they know you’re around. Also works on allies.
7/10

Cloaked in Shadows: This is pretty decent. You can trigger minutes amount of fall damage to escape, and this provides additional defense when using stealth.
7/10

Shadow’s Rejuvenation: The healing it provides is substantial, the initiative is minute but adds up over time. Combined with all other stealth traits and you’ll be getting around 420 HP / Second with condi cleansing, and reduced damage, making a stealth spamming thief much tankier than they appear to be.
7/10

Venomous Aura: This is what you play thieves for. As a group trait goes, this is monstrously dangerous. Combined with Leeching Venoms it is an AoE might stack + substantial heal + substantial damage. This turns venoms from “nice bonuses” to “OH SHISH KABOB”. In condi builds, Spider and Skale venom do immense damage and vulnerability. In all builds, Devourer Venom and Basilisk Venom lock people down. Skelk Venom Provides even more group healing. With Chill changes, Ice Drake Venom has fallen from grace.
10/10

I also do think that the only reason that thread has grown so much is because it was started by phantaram, AKA the only name I recognize from tournament videos. Part of the reason I bring this up is to fix a strange page listing bug the forums get sometimes.

Being a holdover from City of Heroes, I’ve hosted dozens of raids myself. In fact, I started to become somewhat famous in my server for hosting the raids.

But from what I hear about raids in other games, I don’t think they are as blessed as the ones in CoH was. We all remember that audio clip of the guy hosting a raid who starts screaming obscenities about how someone messed up and are getting -50 DKP or whatever that is supposed to be. I get the feeling CoH raids were far easier due to the “potion system” in that game being lenient, and I think my server was particularly good at them. Heck, I still have the guide videos on youtube for most of them (abridged due to time, of course).

Anyway, there are a series of things that make raids as a whole rather unenjoyable in different gaming circles, as well as things that are just unenjoyable as a whole on the raiding aspect:

1): Incompetence grows exponentially with group size. When people say they want a 30 main raid, I continually picture this as 30 people who aren’t paying attention, 30 people who will disconnect, 30 people actively trying to troll the group, 30 people refusing to cooperate because they want to do it their way, 30 people with a superiority complex, 30 people who don’t speak english, and 30 people who turn chat off and refuse to listen. I have a hard enough time dealing with 4 players and all of the above, let alone piling 25 more on to that.

2): It’ll be a slaughterfest. The way the game is designed around personal safety and avoiding damage, making an event that auto scales for 30 people basically means that every attack will be a OHKO like it is with scaled up champions in the game.

3): It’ll be a lag fest. We already have culling issues, and even at minimum graphics my 4gb processor still messes up. LIkewise, people with older or slower computers end up with the short stick when it comes to raids.

4): Wouldn’t be able to see anything from all the effects.

5): Our players become nameless. In small content a single player has a noticable impact on how things play out, and you can formulate short term strategies based on what is needed to be done. In a group of 30, it’ll just be all DPS, DPS, and more DPS. Due to the AoE limits you won’t be able to heal the group or buff the group or defend the group or even do a ton of damage to an enemy zerg scaled to the size of 30 people.

6): Smaller servers will have a much harder time forming a raid than the larger servers do.

7): It is either a grind or it is never run. If it gives tokens or relies on the RNG, it’ll be an endless grind. If it just gives the reward out for succeeding, it’ll never be run by anyone more than once.

So in the end, you can’t see everything that is killing you in one hit while you have to reel in the incompetence of half the players, the absence of a quarter, and the whiney superiority complex of the remaining quarter, and you have to do this every day in succession for a week. Frankly, it just doesn’t sound appealing. It sounds more like a job then any actual “fun”.

Zenith.7301:

But lets assume that we’re going to sacrifice all of the goodies in Curses for what is in Reaping.

And by “goodies” you mean weakening shroud, which you can’t flash effectively with reaper shroud thanks to the 1 sec icd

I think this sums up the problem with talking to you in the most succinct manner.. You don’t realize when you’ve made an obvious logic error. You’re also moving the goalposts, changing the topics and dodging questions. Communication with you is nigh impossible. Right now, the greatest argument against you is yourself.

N.A.S.A. forgot toilets.

I have to keep reminding myself of this fact whenever I see a massive oversight in the game design. Now, the queen’s gauntlet is fun and all, definitely better than the grindfest below. But, therein lies a problem that I am assuming Anet didn’t quite process when designing the event:

You have a gigantic zerg of players fighting a gigantic zerg of monsters, and in this exact same zone you have an event that features reflex based gameplay and one shot kill mechanics on bosses.

The problem being that, in this zone, there are immense lag spikes very frequently. These lag spikes cause people to die in the gauntlet whenever one happens next to an instant death mechanic.

maha.7902:

stuff

I always have a hard time debating someone when I suspect they are being disingenuous. Now, I can argue about all the different ways someone can handle, build about, and expand upon all of the different ideas I have, but ultimately this is all worthless if that someone refuses to be reasonable. There is a very unfortunate tendency I see all the time, where when given a notion, someone will be so argumentative that they will instantly dismiss ideas by assuming the worst possible circumstances possible.

For example, lets take the directionally based damage reduction idea. You claim it is just a damage throttle.

#1: Enemies don’t have rigid HP upon design. An enemy with directionally based defenses can have their HP adjusted freely upon creation, and the neutral point for a 90% reduction in defenses is at 82% HP, assuming all players do only direct damage.

#2: These enemies won’t reduce condition damage, meaning that if focused on a condition based player via a simplistic aggro system, then there wouldn’t be any damage reduction for that group.

#3: The frequency of enemies in content is variable upon design, as well. So, if one wants to encourage better tactics, they can have fewer enemies along the path if these enemies have a direction damage reduction component.

#4: CC can be effect against these enemies to ensure maximum damage. In particular fear effects on immobilized or cornered enemies will force their back to be turned to all players, allowing all players to have maximum damage against this enemy.

#5: These enemies can have attack animations of variable length, encouraging players to rotate around the enemy when they do a large telegraph, allowing maximum damage for all players should the one who drew aggro be smart enough to go around to the enemy’s rear.

#6: These enemies can have a built in weakness to CC effects, such as making stuns and knockdowns last twice as long. This would encourage frequent use of CC to maximize damage by the singled out player.

#7: Directional damage reduction can also be direction damage increase. Instead of a 10/100 split, you can have a 10/200 split on enemies with marginally higher HP, allowing for greater overall kill speed than regular enemies with basic tactics. This causes big, flashy numbers, and people like seeing big numbers.

#8: I have yet to hear an objective argument against slightly longer kill times. Just people complaining that they don’t like it, and arbitrarily enforcing their distaste on X circumstance. Hell, anything can be considered a damage throttle if it forces you to dodge or heal, and thus stop attacking for awhile. For now, I will assert that directionally based damage reduction encouraging smarter positioning against enemies is an engaging mechanic that will make the game more fun. Proof of this is the fact that you have to actually do something to counteract this defense.

The conflict about integrity is whether you didn’t say these things because you didn’t think of them, or because you didn’t want to bother bringing it up. For now, I demand proof that you are actually worthy of talking to, otherwise I encourage everyone in this thread to just ignore you.

Definitely me. I’m not much of a raid guy, as much as I am a dungeon guy. Small teams, long paths, multiple challenges to tackle at my leisure.

What I would really like to see, though, is a randomly generated dungeon. Originally Anet attempted this with fractals, but it made them too hard to approach. I’d like to see a dungeon that makes a simple but randomly generated path from a series of different room types, with different bosses and enemies and different environments/puzzles.

I suppose the biggest thing I take issue with, is that his video starts by assuming that the decision was a good one, and then defends this assertion by invoking an argument from ignorance over and over again. “Oh, you can’t say it is a bad decision because you don’t know how many people are working there already”, or “You can’t say it is a bad decision because you don’t have the metrics.” and so on. Basically, his whole video is that we are in the wrong for saying that this was a bad decision, because we cannot possibly comprehend what would be a good decision in this circumstance.

Yeah, no, I don’t buy it.

Woodenpotatoes is the opposite. Instead of using what we don’t know to assert that we cannot know, he builds on the knowledge that we do have and reasons back and forth between the points. Generally, I tend favor this approach, as I have issues to surrendering to ignorance. Deep, personal, existential issues, but issues nonetheless.

The one point he does make is that I think the community is a bit too outraged over this decision. I myself am more or less just mildly annoyed, but some people are just fuming. Social media is a bit like an echo chamber, in that the negativity keeps bouncing back and forth until it builds to the point where people start throwing bricks at peoples house. This decision isn’t that bad. But it is bad.

I wrote about this once before. But basically the bags and boxes in bags is a programming shortcut to manipulate loot drops.

Ashen.2907:

1) I highly doubt they really hate elitism in general, but may dislike when it works against them personally. I would not be surprised to find that if asked to choose between a surgeon that graduated top in his class and who has since performed a given procedure hundreds or thousands of times and one who barely graduated with assistance and who has little experience with the procedure in question the elite hating individuals would discard their hatred in favor of the superior option. I believe that its not a matter of, “principle,” but rather of personal advancement.

2) If the run is labeled a certain way in LFG anyone joining who does not meat the listed parameters is being selfish and rude.

3) Then they shouldn’t be joining runs labeled as zerker only. If I cannot swim it would be disrespectful to the other members of the team for me to join a team swim event.

4) There are runs that do not require zerker only. The player is also capable of starting his own group.

5) Good point, but if you don’t know, ask, seems reasonable. I also believe that it is safe to assume that if you have no idea what something is you might want to research it a bit before joining a group designate for it.

The anticipated speed of the run is not and expectation that only one person has. It is an expectation that anyone joining the group in accordance with its advertised goals has. One person ignoring the expectation of the intent and goals of everyone else in a group of players is being selfish and rude in the same way as if I joined a PvP group and decided to throw the match.

1)You confuse “elitist” with “good”. You’d be amazed how many people with a militant superiority complex aren’t superior at all. Zerk requirements in the game are extraneous, and that is a fact.
2)Matching regular expectations isn’t selfish and rude.
3)I agree, but nonetheless this doesn’t change how someone feels.
4)Forming their own party doesn’t matter. They’ll just get a bunch of other people who don’t know what to do, and they’ll learn nothing from their deaths. It is that strange kafkaesque paradox where, to learn to run dungeons in zerker gear, you have to already be able to run dungeons in zerker gear.
5)You do not understand the true effects a lack of knowledge really has: because they don’t know, they don’t know to ask.

The anticipated speed of the run is an expectation that exists only in the minds of people who are familiar with the content, familiar with the terminology, embrace the zerker meta, embrace elitist discrimination, and have instituted the unrealistic expectation that everyone will tag along and perform perfectly. This isn’t “one person” in the entire world of GW2, but only those who have purposely imposed those expectations on themselves.

You seem to misunderstand my purpose. I don’t think people should join zerker parties without having zerker gear. I’m saying that the whole “I’ll grab on to these guys to get faster tokens” idea is a delusion of paranoia, projected by a superiority complex onto its victims to legitimize deep hatred of their fellow man.

I do hate this whole “sinking ship” feeling GW2 has lately. Getting flashbacks from when CoH up and asploded.

@OP: There are several parts where you undersell the necro:

#1: DPS. The power necro has high sustained base DPS, so much so that at full buffs the necromancer will outdamage warriors with jut their auto attack. The power necro is effective at stacking might on themselves, and have several lingering attacks that they can use to layer up multiple sources of damage at once. The real shame with necro DPS is that their only cleaves come from conditions and life blast, but regardless many people find the dagger quite useful against bosses.

#2: Survivability. Life Force is really easy to get in PVE due to waves of enemies that die quickly. This makes power builds extremely durable, since the majority of the time you’ll be life blasting multiple enemies in a row. Those enemies can only damage your LF pool while doing this, and then when you clean up with the dagger + focus later, you get your life force back. One added advantage to this is that a power necro, even a bad one, will have the effect from Scholar Runes on nearly 100% of the time. On a LF build you’ll have a bubble of 14k health that enemies have to go through before you receive real damage,, and this bubble resets really quickly.

#3: Group support. The necromancer is, at its heart, a debuffer, and is capable of applying plenty of weakness, chill, cripple, boon removal, vulnerability, and immobilization. The problem, of course, is that in PVE weakness, chill, cripple, and boon removal aren’t that useful. Now, for newbies who just run around ranging everything, having enemies who are constantly crippled/chilled and immobilized is a real bonus. But for those who melee enemies, this isn’t that useful. Weakness would be good, but against regular enemies it is far inferior to blind, and bosses have reduced weakness duration (just to spite us). Boon removal is situational and spotty, and Anet designs enemies with strong boons to constantly reapply those boons (just to spite us). So, in the end necromancers are left with mostly invulnerability, which they are decent at. If only death shiver was placed somewhere else…

As far as group buffing goes, the necro does have a few tools, but these tools tend to be scattered and hard to work into a DPS build. Ritual of Protection and Spectral wall provide group protection, with Ritual of Protection usually working when you need it, where you need it. The staff can provide close quarters permanent regen as well as occasional condi cleanse and blast finishers, and bone minions can provide further blast finishers. The focus also provides regen to allies it bounces to, and the Necro has a decent, low maintenance heal in Transfusion.

#4: Epidemic. Epidemic is one of the strongest skills in the game, since it is the only skill that is a force multiplier. It makes everyone’s conditions better and longer, and it makes them in a very large AoE, and it does this every 12 to 15 seconds. It is also important to note that epidemic spreads every condition, damaging and debuffing alike. Vulnerability, weakness, burning, blind, etc, all get spread en mass, doubling in intensity or in duration.

You also seem to be under a big misunderstanding with condi necros and epidemic. Condi necros can put all the conditions they want on all the targets already. Weakening shroud, enfeebling blood, grasping dead, mark of blood, tainted shackles, chillblains, unholy feast, corrosive poison cloud, well of suffering, well of corruption, well of darkness, locust swarm, Death Nova, Death Shiver… they all work in an AoE. What you are confusing is that epidemic is capable of spreading single target conditions, which have higher durations and shorter cooldowns than AoE conditions, and are assuming that all condi necros are doing is auto attacking then using epidemic a minute later. What epidemic really does is multiply all these AoE conditions, and it does this in a much larger AoE. And it does this to other classes conditions, again in a much larger AoE than they can provide. Also, other classes can’t “put all the conditions you want on all the targets”. The only class that comes close to this is the engineer, and they don’t do it in a 600 radius. The only thing the necro needs is burning, and since every other class does burning, and burning becomes redundant as soon as two or more people do it, and with so much ambient burning around (cough Guardians Eles), not having burning becomes a non issue in a team.

Monk Tank.5897:

I still like Sinister > Viper for direct damage.

Unless I have missed something, Viper does more direct damage. It has higher effective power, and against many environmental objects you can’t crit anyway.

Sheobix.8796:

Jesus the calculus nerds came out to play tonight

Why can’t yall just play with Rabid/Rampagers like all the normal condition peasants?

I’m going to tell you a secret: mathematics, logic, and the art of argument are all a convoluted way of flexing our muscles to other people. it is about being the big, macho dude, but “macho” here is in a non-conventional way.

We’re debating the fact of the matter, much like how meat heads at the beach debate who is “strongest” by posturing and flexing. While fact exists there (one guy is the “strongest”), there’s going to be a lot of struggle to come to that fact.

Cameron.6215:

I 100% agree with you, but I believe we won’t appreciate what Acrobatics is until we get to play it with the new specialization traits and overall change of role. And who knows perhaps it will be a very broad trait-line to compliment every other trait-line. This is purely speculation but I’m strongly for belief in this view.

There’s a phrase for this. Its called the argument from ignorance. Your case is that, while acrobatics looks terrible, we can’t say it is terrible because we don’t know what the specialization will bring.

I don’t buy it. For all we know, the specialization will make things worse for Acro. Right now, acro is the worst trait line in the game. The defenses it offers pale in comparison to those in SA and Trickery, and it doesn’t offer meaningful utility on its own. I made a thread about this earlier.

#1: The power spec is really capable of carrying pugs. It spreads good boons easily, has simple rotations, and the amount of blocks and self sustains the rev has lets it take a lot of damage even in glass cannon gear.

#2: The condi build, while not the top of the DPS crowd, is more than serviceable in that role. The main advantage to the condi build is ease of use. It easily hits in AoEs, it has a relatively low ramp up time, it worries very little about enemies leaving damage fields, and it also stacks a lot of might.

#3: Ventari has one of the longest lasting and easiest to use projectile reflects in the game.

#4: The healing spec is the only reliable source of alacrity outside of chronomancer.

I hate how there’s a certain key combination (either alt + click or ctrl + click) that automatically broadcasts an action in chat, instead of just putting it in the chat bar. I cant count how many times I’ve tried to use a block, only to die and discover that I’m now silence from map chat because I said “Flanking Strike!” inadvertently 5 times in a row.

Tspatula.9086:

IT IS NOT A LTP ISSUE. There is no build to counter back to back to back immobes. Or fear, then immobe, then knockdown with significant damage, then immobe again etc… It’s fun to play issue. I never said I can’t do it, or respawn, rally, or get; ressed. I can make it through all the meta events just fine on all the maps. It’s BORING and frustrating because in many of these situations you have very little control over it.

Harper and Yargesh, If you want to play that kind of content and YOU think it’s fun, good for you. Just like Mike O’Brien said about no one just plays world vs world, you are the minority in this game currently, as far as I can tell. There is a reason why my post is not the only one of it’s kind, and yours are a lot less common for HoT…

edit* And lets not forget this is all happening alongside a near constant spamming of condis, torment, and confusion by the mobs. Tell why does a tenderil have over 30K hitpoints with evasion? it’s absurdly stupid, not challenging

It is a learn to play issue. You’ve just given up and resolved yourself to failure, because you lack the creative capacity to figure out how to beat the enemies.

The solutions are there, and many times they are really obvious. You just have to be willing to look for them.

What I find interesting about all this despair is that I’ve heard it all before. It was on the necro forum. It was on the memser forum. It was on the ranger forum (still is, kind of). It was on the ele forum. It was on the warrior forum. It is currently on the guardian forum. It was on the engi forum, too, and they’re the most chill forum. Throughout this game’s life, there has been several points on every single forum where the class collectively jumps onto the all is vain train and convulses violently on the floor, hoping that it will get the devs to love them a little bit more.

It is the exact same arguments, too. “Oh, I came up with a bunch of things that I wanted and the devs didn’t do what I want so the devs don’t love me!!!”. Follow through with the same “X does better than my class”, “I’m quitting my class”, “If it weren’t for X we wouldn’t even be viable”, so on and so forth. No introspection, no concern for other classes, no self doubt. Times like this I resent the fact that the internet is mostly mid-pubescent teenagers.

And every time it is wrong. The class gets buffed while others get nerfed, and then there is a wave of “this class is OP bring it down!” for the next several weeks. It has happened to every class, sometimes multiple times. The doom and gloom was wrong the last dozen times it happened, it is wrong now, and it will be wrong the next dozen times it happens. It feels like I’m the only guy with a memory here.

So, what makes the thief so special, where other classes (Rangers and Guards, in particular) are worse off and have more legitimate complaints in all forms of the game? When other classes were in objectively worse positions throughout GW2 history? So far, only that thieves whine the hardest.

I find a lot of these complaints to be wrong to the point where it is irrational.

The daredevil is not the new class mechanic. The daredevil is the sum total. It is the new weapon, new utilities, new traits, and new mechanical additions to the class. You have to take all of these into consideration, or else you are outright lying in your complaints.

Looking at everything, the Daredevil is solid. Sure the animations are unpolished, but think about what we do get. Look first at the staff:

*A weapon auto that stacks 14 vulnerability and reflects projectiles. Previously you had to be a condi thief to stack decent vulnerability, and now you don’t.
*Weakening Charge hits harder than heartseeker, does it on 5 targets, and inflicts weakness on each hit for the same initiative cost.
*An evade skill that cures immobilize, the greatest weakness of weapon dodges.
*A recently buffed cone blind
*Another massive AoE damage leap finisher + movement skill which itself may become a dodge
*A 2 second knockdown from stealth

Conclusion: The weapon is a high damage weakness and vulnerability spammer with multiple finishers and an evade you can’t “lock down” like the others.

And the utlities:
*A combo melee skill which outpaces haste in overall damage increase and stuns for 2 seconds.
*A 15/12 second recharge stun breaker block which counterattacks with a 2 second knockdown in melee.
*Power Block + Mantra of Distraction in a single utility
*A ranged skill which inflicts slow, immobilize and poison on another player while doing decent damage
*A somewhat gimmicky finisher skill that dazes + knockdowns for 3 seconds
*A heal skill which recharges 75% endurance every 20/16 seconds.

Conclusion: A crap ton of disables mixed with both offensive and defensive power, capable of being used at multiple ranges. The heal skill provides a massive endurance boost, greater than perma vigor when by itself and greater than pre-nerf vigor when traited.

And the traits:
*Default specialization trait which gives 50 endurance, and takes away nothing.
*Minor heal on dodge. Strong enough to be useful
*50 Endurance on Steal
*A choice between recharge reduction and endurance on physical skills, minor damage buff after dodging, or weakness on crit
*A choice between omni condi cleanse on dodge, endurance regen + damage bonus on staff, and a strong hit on every interrupt
*A choice between a leap finisher damaging dodge, a whirl finisher condi dodge, and a condi cleansing long range dash.

Conclusion: solid traits that let you make offensive, defensive, or even mixed decisions on what you want to buff. The utilities are versatile enough to be used with every other trait line, making them a toolbox that augments the thief in many ways.

So the utilities are good. The weapon is good. The traits are good. You can build for ranged or melee combat, condition or direct damage (even hybrid with how pulmonary impact works), offensive or defensive. It is literally anything you could want in an elite specialization. And yet, the entire forum has decided to take point on a single contrived deficiency, and just hammer that point into the ground.

This isn’t about base thief. Base thief can use some improvements. But once the movements are polished, daredevil is solid.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

To be more clear, I should point out that you can’t really get more condition damage than you can with Rabid (maybe Dire, with a tuning crystal, but eh). So any tradeoff of durability for damage will be to add some power into your mix for direct damage.

That said, Viper might be the closest thing condi has to pure glass. It loses precision (less bleeds) and some condition damage, but gains condition duration and a strong amount of power. It’s possible that the condi duration will outweigh the lost condi damage in raw power, but no one’s done the math on that yet.

Somebody has.

Harper.4173:

You make a fair point – but this doesn’t fix the problem.
If mesmer is best at reflecting but ele brings enough reflects for the raid while bringing let’s say superior dps then there’s never any reason to bring mesmer over ele. Because even if he’s strongest at reflecting it isn’t needed.

Simlarly we might see a requirement for the class that does “good enough of role X as needed to progress while adding as much to the party as possible” – in this case engineers, eles and guardians might fare very well with other more niche-classes being left aside.

Got to be honest: I’m not even sure what you mean by “problem” anymore.
A)The meta being theoretically more oppressive because of required roles?
B)Classes being restricted to particular roles that suit them best?
C)The insistence of players to take a “best class” for that role?
D)The insistence of players to have optimum class composition?
E)The best class for a role not being the most focused?

To someone who wants to play as a healer, the exact level of discrimination between classes isn’t as important. Whether one class is better at being a healer for non-healer properties, that’s more of an issue of class balance then it is role balance. Class viability is a different topic that exists regardless of role viability in optimum builds. It is a legitimate problem, but not the problem pro-tank/healer players have with the meta.

There are advantages to having role be balanced in such a way that there is a wide margin between what is best and what is necessary. Particularly, it is more tolerant to pugging and randoms. It is a lot like the system we have now, except tank and healing roles will be enforced. Having the same variability but additional encourages roles, some would call that a win.

So long as you don’t mind the wait times.

Which is a shame, since the day Anet releases these into the gemstore is the day Anet makes a million dollars.

So, what should be done about WvW? My answer to this are to rework the incentives. As much as I like the lulz of playing WvW, the fact is that a certain level of incentive is needed to keep people interested. So, for the remainder of the thread, if you don’t want to be a bitter lil’ boi, this can be a good place to come up with new ideas and incentives to help make WvW a more attractive option for players to play in.

Currently, the rewards in WvW are also as strange as U.S. tax laws: the primary rewards in WvW comes from player kills, which have little to do with the actual scoring system in WvW. This creates an extremely strange and unfair reward system for WvW, in that the capacity to get rewards is based upon enemy population, which is based on your own server’s rank. This creates a form of negative feed back where the fewer people there are, the fewer reasons why you’d want to get into WvW, which makes fewer people want to go there, which gives even less reasons to go there in the first place.

Sucks, doesn’kitten Well, as for the “fix” to this problem, I take inspiration from a few other games. And by taking inspiration, I mean “shamelessly ripping off and claiming these ideas as my own”.

The simplest idea I can borrow is to put a series of high rewards that are based in holding towers and keeps, and exploration. Here’s some highly basic and unrefined ideas on stuff that can be done:

-Towers would have workers that would gather materials, and a respawning chest that will give players fine crafting materials after they’ve had control of the tower for a consecutive half hour.
-Keeps would have farming patches and gathering nodes that will replenish themselves regularly (half hour, 15 minutes with worker upgrade).
-Stonemist would have both of these, and also increase the magic find of players in WvW.

The basic idea being that WvW would be about grabbing and holding real estate long enough to get a series of perks from doing so. Supply camps wouldn’t get anything, since their ability to provide supply would directly contribute to the ability to grab and defend other places. In lower population servers, it would be easier to grab and hold things without worrying about flipping immediately, but high population servers will end up with players farming each other for drops.

Likewise, currently in EotM it is far more profitable to just capture places than to keep them. Another idea, albeit a more punishing one, is to make it so capturing any tower/keep starts a 15 minute long event where you have to defend it, and if you don’t defend the tower/keep, then the event fails and you don’t get any awards. That way, instead of gigantic zergs just rushing around grabbing whatever they can, the players would have to hold their captures long enough to get the gold/karma off of the keeps. I say this is “punishing” because ultimately it delays players from getting rewards, instead of giving incentives for playing differently than they do now.

Unfortunately, the flow of creative juices has run dry on my end. But alas, I think this will open up the discussion to more things. For now, I’ll just throw these out

-Week long rewards for player servers winning matchups
-A score scaling incentive other than Power of the Mists