Guild Wars 2

Fay.2357:

That doesn’t really matter for testing.

IIRC it messes up your crit chance.

Though if you’re going to be running that dungeon a lot anyway…

Rukh.9287:

Going with celestial gear is going to lower your statistical damage output on a training dummy, it’s objectively true. However, you also get survivability and you get healing to recover from an unfortunate situation.

Seems like mixing gear to get the stat spread you want will do more for you than going whole-hog Celestial, which involves trading away a lot of whatever stat(s) you want most for stats you might not want at all.

It’s one thing to shave a bit of critical damage to get more Toughness/Vitality. It’s quite another to just throw Power in the toilet in order to pick up some moderate… Healing Power. :/

Are there mesmer builds that want all the stats equally and can tolerate having Power and Condition Damage equivalent to wearing sub-80 basics? I personally can’t think of any.

hunterkiller.5419:

It have been spreading around, and the reason why thieves nowadays aren’t running stealth… is because almost most of the time other players get upset is due to the stealth mechanic and in fear of getting more nerfs, thieves are moving away from what defines them as a class; in my own opinion.. stealth.

To my knowledge, thieves don’t run much stealth in sPvP because you can’t contest points in stealth. They definitely do run it — gobs of it, usually — in WvW.

You don’t really need stealth in PvE except for fight-skipping.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Well, look at the training NPCs, they seem to have a more advanced AI than your normal mobs, so at least some of good AI is possible. The AI we got now is the most basic of the basic: run into line of sight and use skills at random when off CD.

I wouldn’t mind seeing more (a lot more) mobs that work like that in PvE. Well, like the warrior and engineer, at least; I think those are the most fun of the lot. I don’t think it would make PvP reward other “playstyles” more, necessarily, but it would make some of the random open-world stuff more fun.

There are some good examples already, actually, but they kinda get lost in the crowd of really one-note monsters.

Oenanthe.6549:

Alternatively they could put in a reward for not dying, you already have an achievement for experience gained with out way porting, dying etc. Add another achievement for reaching level 80 without dying and one for world completion with out dying. complete with titles and chests (Been there, done that, didn’t die?)

Those particular ones would encourage craven and antisocial play.

In Guild Wars 1, before they changed Survivor to use cumulative XP gained between deaths (instead of something you can only fill up from level 1), I hated teaming with would-be Survivors. Because they tended to be absolute rubbish at supporting the team in tight spots. Way too timid and way too prone to abandoning the group.

Here’s a stupid environment story that doesn’t end with anyone falling off a cliff.

I’m chasing a guardian through that river bit near the Borderlands south camp. He didn’t really fight, just bolted immediately and started using his healing/defensive stuff while I plinked at him from range. Pretty sure he was upleveled. Anyway, I down him on the river bank.

He pops his knockback bubble before I’ve even gotten close enough to initiate the stomp. This ends up aggroing three drakes.

I stand there kinda incredulously while they nibble him to death.

eldenbri.1059:

- I suggest avoiding fights with multiple opponents as much as possible to start. For sure, watching my friend on warrior made me envious early on. Mesmer is not great at multiple mobs.

It’s the best way to really learn some of the mechanics, though. Controlling a single critter is pretty boring. I think it’s easier to get used to snaring multiple enemies with your attacks pretty early in the game; it’ll make you a better player later.

1) What are mesmer pros and cons? Where do they shine? and when are they underwhelming?

Strictly opinion here.
Advantages:

• Mesmers have a great combination of specialty abilities. You can teleport, you can use stealth, you can reflect stuff, you can throw baddies around, you can give yourself short-term invincibility, you can create Portals for other players. It’s awesome to have these all available on one class.
• Thanks to phantasms, mesmers can “ramp up” nicely in extended fights. As long as your phantasms stay up, you’ll be doing good damage.
• Shatter is a fun and unique resource-management playstyle.
• Non-shatter builds can support a somewhat leisurely pace. You can’t, like, sleepwalk your way through the game, but mesmer can be far less twitchy and hyperactive than professions like elementalist and thief.
• You have some great group-oriented like Null Field and Veil, though to be honest elementalists (combo fields!) and necros (in WvW, where boon stripping matters) probably do it better.
• In PvE, you are the absolute master of reflection. Totally changes the dynamic in a lot of fights.
• A lot of your PvE damage mitigation comes from evasion and reflection. These are much more powerful than daze/stun or blind spam since they still work on bosses.
• Staff is one of the finest weapons in GW2. Very mobile and flexible.
• Greatsword gives you a long-range insta-hit laser beam that’s great for focusing down squishy targets in small-/medium-sized group WvW. All the players using lowly projectiles are so jealous.
• Big baseline health pool means you can be pretty durable if you pick up a bit of Toughness. You don’t suffer for your small mistakes as much as eles and thieves do.

Disadvantages:

• Damage output isn’t, like, amazing, unless you’re using reflection on PvE monsters or playing full burst shatter in PvP.
• Mesmers aren’t very good at area-effect damage, as far as GW2 classes go. You’ll have a few ways to tag a bunch of targets at once, but nothing that really compares to an elementalist, an engineer, a shortbow thief, or even most necromancers, warriors, and guardians.
• It’s kinda hard to get strong on-demand condition removal unless you use traited Mantra of Recovery. (Null Field, Arcane Thievery, and Phantasmal Disenchanter are all good, situationally, but two have long cooldowns and the third tends to die a lot.)
• Mesmers are very reliant on traits to be effective. If your pick traits poorly you’re pretty much guaranteed to suck. More so than any other class I’ve tried, I look at my traits and always think “Man, I wish I just had a few more points to pick up this one other thing…”
• You don’t have much in the way of speed boosts (only source of reliable swiftness is the focus; no “+25% movement” signets/traits), meaning that you’re pretty slow at map travel unless you have dedicated group support or devote your rune slots to it. This is mostly a big deal for WvW.
• Long-range fighting and stealthy fighting are both of limited use in structured PvP, since it’s imperative that you stand on the point (unstealthed) to claim it, so your build options are constrained a bit.
• Confusion feels kinda stupid in PvE because of how slowly the mobs attack. (Luckily you have other conditions you can use reliably.)

I used to play thief (I’m very much a one-character-at-a-time kind of player) but I switched to mesmer because I like the flow of play and the utilities better.

2) So I have found many different builds for pve and pvp, but I dont know which one to focus on to start off my adventure, I know there isn’t really the best one etc, but if you can mention what builds works for you the best in pve AND pvp, with the weapons etc, I would REALLY appreciate it.

Just try everything, really. The way your stuff plays at low levels isn’t going to tell you that much about endgame PvE or PvP.
I leveled with a mix of Staff condition builds and Sword-based melee builds. Now I mostly play PU Greatsword in WvW, and Sword/Sword+Sword/Focus (or Sword/Sword+Greatsword when I feel lazy) in PvE.

3) Unfortunately, I am a very lonely person. Is mesmergoing to be hard to level up solo ? I would like to be able to level and up and play.
Thanks in advance for all your thoughts and efforts. <

Mesmer’s kinda slow until you get to your higher-end traits (which is like level 60 nowadays). Not hard per se. Not super duper fragile, either. But, well, killing things takes a while, which might make you envious of the heavy-armor folk around you.
Mostly where the difficulty spikes is in certain personal story bits where you get a lot of enemy aggro all at once. Other than that I leveled and went through personal story feeling like I always had a useful trick or two up my sleeve. It’s a pretty flexible class.

killahmayne.9518:

While it would only reduce the CD of blurred Frenzy

Actually, weapon cooldown traits and Illusionist’s Celerity stack. The tooltips just don’t show the cooldown durations correctly. Try it out with Blade Training, for example: your iSwordsman will say 16 seconds but the actual cooldown when you active it is 12.

Very general advice here.

Try all the weapons. You might hate some of them. Try some of them again later when your traits and skills improve. I hated greatsword until I got to 80 but it’s by far my favorite weapon now.

You’re mostly ranged, but try some melee. Sword/Sword, for example. The damage output is decent. Also, Sword has a block and an evade. When I first started GW2, I’d dodge, but I really wouldn’t use dodge to evade, just to gain some distance between myself and attacks preemptively. Avoiding damage while standing in place gets you in the habit of thinking of your dodges as active mitigation rather than just quick movement. Also get in the habit of circle-strafe around mobs at melee range.

Get in the habit of trying to keep your clones and phantasms going. Usually you want to be spawning phantasms whenever they’re off cooldown.

Experiment with spreading your illusions around or putting them all on one target.

Try the Feedback skill. It’s a great way to protect yourself from ranged guys while doing pretty good damage. If you like reflection a lot, you can get more later on through traits.

If you like the concept and flow of the class but it feels weak or slow, stick with it — mesmer improves drastically ones you get access to major traits (past level 60): better damage, lower cooldowns, more clones, reflection, much better boon and condition generation, &c. I mean, every class is a bit like that, but it’s really, really notable with mesmers . (Of course, if you don’t like the gameplay at all, try another class.)

~

As far as “ins and outs,” stuff that’s maybe not very clear based on just reading the abilities and experimenting for a few minutes…

As stated by other posters, phantasms are damage sources, clones are distractions and shatter fodder. The one exception here is that clones spread conditions if their attack skill has ‘em (like with the staff). Note that shattering doesn’t count as “clone death,” but having your clone pop because you went over your 3-illusion limit does.

If you go over your 3-illusion limit, one of your old illusions will die. The game kills clones before Phantasms. So if I have two Illusionary Warlocks and a clone, and I use Phase Retreat (which makes a clone), it’ll pop the old clone and make the new one where I Phase Retreated. It always makes the new illusion, though: so if I had three Warlocks I’d lose one of the Warlocks to make room for my new clone.

There’s generally three big ways people make mesmers: phantasm, shatter, and conditions.

• Phantasm mesmers set up phantasms (e.g. Illusionary Swordsman, Illusionary Berserker, Illusionary Duelist) for sustained damage output. Nearly every PvE build leans heavily on phantasms; you can use them to good effect in PvP as well.
• Shattering illusions gives you big burst damage, and you can spec for other stuff like boon-stripping. Shattering is mainly a PvP style.
• Condition mesmers attack using condition damage. The main benefit of this style is durability (since you can use tanky Dire or Dire+Rabid gear) and huge utility from all your clones. Most people will say this kind of spec doesn’t play well with others, though.
  Of course, these kinda blend together in play. Like phantasm mesmers might still shatter for the interrupt or a last hit of damage. It’s just a matter of your overall build and what “Plan A” is.

Mesmers reflect stuff. A lot, if you have traited Focus. It’s a great way to get damage on mobs. Some mobs (particularly in dungeons) have unreflectable attacks, though. Some (all? I forget) of these will go through a traited Warden but are still absorbed by an untrained one.

You can make illusions without breaking stealth (unless it’s part of an attack, like Mirror Blade).

Daishi.6027:

But I’ve been having an awesome time making myself look nice and elegant in the ancestral clothes, and then having these ungodly weird looking things summoned from no where. It’s great for RP and lulz if you wish to mess around with.

I’ve been using outfits off and on in the hopes of getting other players to think that there are more players fighting them. Can’t say it works, but I also can’t really say it’s hurt me so far. Kind of a fun weird thing to do on the side.

I think the tricky thing is that control and support mostly comes from skills independent of stats (traits matter, but your gear stats generally don’t as much). That “max DPS” dungeon build is actually a damage/support/control mix that achieves max DPS through party buffs, reflects, pulling the boss to the right spot (a very stat-independent form of control), &c.

The combination of active control, active defense, and mostly-passive DPS abilities (at least when you’re trying to do pure “DPS” against an enemy with a bajillion hit points) means there’s fairly little reward to gearing more defensively for PvE.

You can always experiment and see if it fits your skills and playstyle, then adjust equipment to suit. PU and Blink are really good tools for avoiding damage.

I’ve been running with Zerk weapons and trinkets and Knight/Soldier mixed armor. I like the extra defense and I needed an armor set with a speed buff rune (went with Traveler but that’s not the only option), anyway, whereas it’s much better to have a pure DPS rune for PvE stuff (I went with Ranger, because I’m cheap).

I don’t quite get how this would shake up the metagame.

My understanding is that shatter mesmers mainly take IP for the “four-clone” shatter benefit. Many of the existing shatter-mez tricks involve stacking clones on yourself, so it’s not like you couldn’t play IP-less shatter if you didn’t mind your Mind Wracks sucking.

For builds that don’t go deep into Illusions, Deceptive Evasion is usually sufficient to have a single-clone shatter “on demand.” Greatsword and Staff both give you a pretty easy way to get a clone out for the short Distraction/Diversion.

What the heck is five-hits Shadow Stab?

Simon.3794:

Pve Wise, You can’t seem to understand how getting free 15% damage and 15% crit chance for NOT spending your class mechanic skill at all is NOT a good implement, like seriously.

Thieves get a bonus for not using their initiative.

Mesmer mechanics are full of tension between keeping your illusions up and shattering them.

You can spec a warrior or mesmer to reward never activating any of your utility skills.

So, I dunno, is this a big deal? I mean, burst skills tend to reward spiking and spike damage just doesn’t matter much in PvE. It’s all about sustained pressure since enemies have a bajillion hp but their incoming attacks are so predictable.

Yunalesca.9850:

+ both ranged weapons so I don’t have to get to close to the enemy

Note that you do need to close in to get the most out of Illusionary Persona Mind Wracks. That’s one of the things that makes Sword so attractive to most builds.

Eviscerate.
Earthshaker.
Combustive Shot.
Skull Crack.

These are pretty awesome skills, actually.

Ezeriel.9574:

…but the reality is, a warrior 2-shotting clones as fast as you can make them

That’s kind of what they’re there for.

Clones are utterly disposable. Don’t get me wrong, they’re useful: you can get some good damage out of them with a Staff build, and they’re by far the easiest way to set up shatters (such as the every-popular Mirror Images + dodge + IP burst). But they’re really not supposed to, like, tank enemies for an extended amount of time or anything.

A lot of mez builds benefit from this, actually, since you can apply a couple of nasty effects on clone death, and many opponents can’t help but cleave through your clones if you’re standing near one.

You’re never really going to keep a yak alive with a sustained-pressure build. Unless the attacker is a tanky uplevel or something, I guess?

You need burst+CC. Even then, it’s pretty hard unless you catch your enemy a good distance before they hit the yak. Many WvW characters have enough damage output and stunbreaks/stability to kill the yak before you can kill them (which is usually worth it to them, if they’re serious about denying supply).

There are several ways to get Force on the cheap.
- If you haven’t completed your personal story, do the level 70-80 missions and you’ll get two greens with Superior Sigils of Force. Black-Lion-salvage ’em.
- Make a Rusttooth in the Mystic Forge, then salvage it. It costs practically nothing besides the skill points.

artel.9382:

I got the update normally (i waited for half an hour an the update run normally itself)…The problem seems to be afterwards when I hit play…I get nothing…only a black screen

I had this happen and deleting “/Library/Application Support/Guild Wars 2” (see step 4 here) fixed it for me. Note that you will need to redo your graphics and audio settings if you do this (hotkeys should still be fine; I think they’re saved on the server or something).

Try this to get a bit more info:
1. Open a Terminal
2. Type “cd /Applications/Guild\ Wars\ 2.app/Contents/MacOS/”
3. Type “./cider”

This’ll launch the game client, but it’ll have a terminal window to spew text into. You might see some useful error messages. You can copy things from the terminal by selecting them with your mouse and then doing the normal Cmd+C thing.

kara.9453:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Stuck-at-0-KB-s/first

This thread worked for me.

An attempt at making instructions for other Mac users:
1. Open a Terminal.
2. Modify /etc/hosts to add the line "174.35.56.164 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com" ("Wait? How do I do this?" -- See below)
3. Use "sudo kill -HUP $(pgrep -f mDNS)" to reset mDNSResolver so everything gets the new address correctly
4. Launch Guild Wars normally.

I think ANet’s CDN is busted. It’s not specific to the Mac client.

~~~~

If you don’t know how to use an editor like Vim, here’s a crash course on the simplest one I could find:
a. Trashing up this file is bad. Make a copy if you don’t know what you’re doing. Type "sudo cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak" (password would be your password)
b. Type "sudo nano /etc/hosts"
c. Okay, you are in a simple text editor called Nano
d. Navigate to the end of the file with arrow keys
e. Add "174.35.56.164 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com" on its own line
f. Type Control+O to save
g. Type Control+X to exit
h. If you decide you want to undo your changes, or you messed something up, just type "sudo cp /etc/hosts.bak /etc/hosts" to put the original file back

For reference, here is what my /etc/hosts looks like when I am done:
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
# Temp - fix busted ArenaNet CDN D:
174.35.56.164 assetcdn.101.arenanetworks.com

I wouldn’t switch to S/D right now.

The revealed nerf significantly hoses your stun uptime, which is really the focus of that build.
The #3 skill is still really erratic.

I’ve switched from S/D to D/P myself, because the recent Shadow Shot fix did a lot to improve D/P’s gameplay.

bladie.5084:

I do not understand the animation of it, where you’re shooting “powder” from your gun but it drops to your feet?

The original gunpowder, called “black powder” today, wasn’t smokeless. So when you fired a really-old-timey firearm, it would create a little cloud of smoke around the gun. The thief’s Black Powder shot is supposed to represent what happens when you “overdo it.” You’re not shooting the smoke; you’re using a side-effect of discharging the weapon to create the smoke.

Kincaidia.3192:

Interesting idea for a solution though – the claiming guild has a public and a private supply stash, and only the claiming guild can order upgrades.

That’ll be a logistical nightmare.

Under the current system, I can claim a keep, put up my guild buffs, and let my server enjoy the benefits of our sweet buffs even after everyone in my guild has logged for the night. With your proposal, we shouldn’t claim anything unless we set up 24-hour presence to manage the keep.

Also, as bad as some random using up supply might be, imagine a couple of guys locking you out of upgrading ANYTHING EVER by just claiming kitten and abandoning it.

Karolis.4261:

So what if they will finish you ?

So what? I don’t know. That’s the user’s original complaint.

I’m just calling it out when y’all make mechanical suggestions that don’t actually have the gameplay effect you think they will.

Caelib.2497:

Right now glass cannon builds can down any play in 2 – 3 seconds and have virtually gauranteed finish because they can’t be targeted during a finish with Shadow Sanctuary.

They’d finish you anyway, thanks to Signet of Shadows.

That’s the same build as the Death Blossom thing, isn’t it?

What do you need to do for the map exploration gold star?
1. Orr: Depending on your character class, you might need to get a buddy to help out, or at least time your exploration to sync up with temple control.
2. All the PvE zones that aren’t Orr: Very easy. At most, there are 1-3 difficult POIs/vistas per zone. My biggest obstacle to completing these is the absolute tedium of doing certain low-level zones.
3. WvW: the actually difficult part.
If you actually had some other challenging component in the achievement requirements, I wouldn’t mind not having WvW count. But, essentially, you don’t. So I feel like it cheapens the gold star significantly to remove WvW.

Same thing for the other legendary requirements, really. It’s not like you have to master high-level Fractals or solo Zhaitan or whatever to get a legendary; just grind something braindead like Shelter/Pen. So, yeah, the Badges of Honor should stay in.

Daecollo.9578:

Wait, don’t they need full trickery/full toughness?

They would need the 2 initative every 10 seconds to spam death blossom, wouldn’t they?

Well, you don’t need to max out Trickery in a condition build just like you don’t need to max out Deadly Arts for a direct-damage-based build.

You can take Quick Recovery as your 20-point trait and Assassin’s Reward as your 30-point trait. It’s usually better than both of the GM traits.

I mean, what other condition builds are there? (Even bad ones?) Seems like thieves don’t really have a lot of options on this front. I’m willing to be proven wrong.

Daecollo.9578:

Currently, relying on Initiative kind of makes the skill poor, applying conditions to heal would be a fun mechanic and would open up a lot more options to thieves besides stealth.

Consider this, though: what are the thief’s actual condition builds?

The #1 condition build is the super-stealth-spammy P/D. Many of them already invest into Acrobatics. So, you’re just giving more healing to a build that already heals pretty hard.

The #2 condition build is the PvE Death Blossom spam build. These builds generally use a lot of initiative regeneration to spam Death Blossom more, so they can already make pretty good use of Assassin’s Reward in its current state.

Victory.2879:

You should NOT be able to stealth when you are downed.

… You pretty much can’t, though?

I mean, Smoke Bomb puts you into stealth for, like, 1 second. Which is about how long you spent casting it. It does stop a stomp if you time it right, but the cooldown is such that it’s only good against people who dawdle on stomping you (if an enemy downs you in melee and goes for a stomp right away, then you port perfectly at the last minute, he can still run up to you and stomp a second time before you have a Smoke Bomb ready).

Thieves who put stealth on themselves right before they go down… enh, that’s good play (or good luck). But you can still find them pretty trivially by looking for the “Finish Them!” and they melt to a few auto-attacks. It’s not at all like trying to find a stealthy thief who can actually move around.

The purpose of Smoke Bomb is to interrupt stomps. If you are stealthed while the finisher animation is playing, the stomp will have no effect.

If they want to make it more useful in PvE they really should change the downed-state sneak attack to be an immobilize or something (daze/stun would be a bit unfair).

Docherty.8372:

What do I mean? Well, look at the roots of this class and it’s abilities – in D&D, look at how stealth is implemented there:

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Stealth

What do we notice? It’s a very complex system with many checks and balances – not saying this is appropriate for GW2, but it does demonstrate the regressive and utterly nonsensical implementation of stealth in GW2.

Here it is less an interesting and flavorsome system than it is a crude client invisibility hack.

I hate to sound mean, but GW2 designers are inexperienced and unimaginative, and need to go back to fantasy-gaming school and learn the lessons of systems developed over the span of decades and millions of hours of play.

Bad example.

D&D (this looks like 3rd edition) isn’t actually a “complex system with checks and balances.” You’re presenting some fairly simple rules — you need to use the environment to stealth while being observed, or a momentary distraction created by using an action to Bluff; the rest is just the bloated mass of modifiers typical of how (that edition of) the game does skills.

How did players actually use these rules in practice? Well, either…
1. Mostly they just used basic stealth checks to sneak and scout a bit, and then when combat started the rogue player would be trying to set up sneak attacks with flaking (since that was an easy-to-resolve and pretty intuitive mechanic that didn’t require four paragraphs about roll modifiers).
2. Look at the ginormous bonuses under “If you are invisible…” If you actually want to abuse in-combat stealth, you just cast a spell or drink a potion and the ridiculous modifier compensates for all that other stuff about -5 this and -10 that. Then you’re totally the D&D (3rd edition) incarnation of a P/D thief, endlessly taking potshots at people who have no idea where you are; don’t even have to close in and use Cloak & Dagger! The only difference is that most GMs will eventually “cheat” a bit, whether consciously or subconsciously, and have the baddies zero in on your location.

So, what is it exactly that GW2 is supposed to learn from Dungeons & Dragons (3rd edition)?

Onionknight.7186:

Really, Warriors getting up a few times from the downed state in a fight when surrounded by friends bug me a lot more than princes and princesses Stabbity doing stab stab kill kill.

They can only use Vengeance if you’ve allowed them to sit there for, like, 10 seconds.
After they do, you only have to keep them busy for a short time before they’re straight-up dead. A decent cripple or two is often enough to do it.

Okay, so, here’s another crack at “Why are there so many complaints about thieves?”

I think the #1 thing is that lots of players find thieves frustrating to play against. You can view that as a “learn to play” issue, but fundamentally it’s also a game-design issue: on some level, the gameplay associated with thieves (or, specifically, stealth) is frustrating and confusing. Why is that?

PvP in Guild Wars 2 is very mobile. There’s already less information than GW1: you don’t have progress bars for enemy skill activations, and the party interface is much more limited. Also, honestly, some abilities create so much visual clutter that it’s very hard to make out all of what’s going on on the battlefield, even if it’s just 3-on-3.

What stealth adds to this situation is low feedback. When an opponent is stealthed, you’re now engaged in a fast-paced, mobile battle against a target you can’t see. The only information you have about what’s going on is:

• Damage numbers appear in the combat chatterbox. (Do you have that turned on in a fight? I doubt it. It’s often a terrible info overload.)
• If using melee attacks, which have chains, your auto-attack icon will change once you connect. (This is actually useful visually if you know what you’re looking at, but most times your second hit won’t connect.)
• Certain skill animations will still show up. Mainly shadowsteps.
• You will still see a “Finish Them!” label if you are next to a stealthed player who’s downed. (Note that you can’t actually stomp them unless the stealth wears off first, though.)

Meanwhile, look what you don’t get:

• Floating damage numbers — the usual way to know whether you’re hitting someone and how hard — don’t show up.
• You can’t even use most ranged attacks. The projectiles just dissipate three feet in front of you. Even if it hits, only the chatterbox will tell you.
• Players are so mobile that the limited information you do get about their location becomes “stale” very quickly.

So, okay, when a player goes into stealth, you’re suddenly playing a fast-paced, mobile game with low information. That’s difficult. More specifically, because of just how much of your normal feedback is taken away from you, I think it’s a textbook example of “fake difficulty”.
Aaaand, let’s be honest, half of your abilities essentially don’t work: all your targeted ranged stuff is pretty much borked, and good luck ever getting the third hit of your auto-attack chain (the one that usually does the useful thing) to connect.

~

Now I’m thinking back to my favorite multiplayer stealth gameplay: Unreal Tournament with “mutators” (tiny mods) for perma-invisibility and one-hit-kill shock rifles. It was the epitome of the “pay attention to the actual visuals rather than UI” thing that GW2 tries for. You’d be skulking around watching for the little tell-tale Predator-style visual distortion of a moving opponent. Then, you fire your shock rifle and a bright orange beam (yes, I know it is normally blue; the “InstaGib” ones were orange) pierces the air, resulting in an explosion of bits if you hit your target… And you run like hell because now there’s a giant orange line pointing to where you were just standing. That as just kind of a little joke game mode, but all of it was very twitchy and very visual… which, sadly, is kinda the opposite of GW2.

(I would never suggest the same mechanics be implemented in a totally different game. But I think the core thing here is important. Make it actually useful to look at the environment instead of the UI.)

~

Thieves have a lot of cool stuff going for them. They have some mechanics that nicely reward skill and planning. They’re aggressive and mobile in a very fun, satisfying way. Most of their mechanics punish misplays hard: both opponents’ and your own — that’s generally good design. But you know something’s a bit rotten when lots of players are flocking to stealth-troll builds in WvW. :/

I got bitten by the death-on-queue-travel thing, too, the first day after the patch. Then I realized that the “Do you want to travel?” window has a “Reenter queue” button. And it actually stays open for quite a while, so you don’t have to make a selection right away. (Being able to move the popup not to be in the middle would be nice.)

At level 80, repairs cost about 1.5 silver. Using a single waypoint in PvE costs 3-4 silver. So even if you’re disconnecting several times a night (which does happen to me, since it seems like GW2 is crashy as all get out on Vista 64 with an Nvidia card), it’s really not a big deal.

Just a quick reply about some old points I made…

1. Culling does need to be fixed. MMO’s that are almost a decade old have no trouble rendering 300+ models, plus textures. However, they are somewhat unique in this complication due to the fact that it is not just players from a single server in WvW.

IIRC, technically speaking, WvW is still on a single server; you’re all essentially “guesting.” It’s not always one of the three servers playing, either. It tells you the server name somewhere on the UI (I think over the minimap?) — you’ll see “Eternal Battlegrounds (Yaks Bend)” or something like that.

I think some of it is a problem with how data is fed to the client. You don’t get info about the location of players you can’t see. However, the game’s still providing you feedback when you hit a thief, so it’s kind of a surprise it takes them a long time to render. It’s really hard to figure out what exactly the engine is doing, but I think part of the issue may be something to do with “animation canceling,” too: like you’re supposed to become visible at the end of Backstab but hitting an auto-attack or Heartseeker (which most thieves will queue up because, well, you’re trying to burst a guy!) delays the reveal a bit more.

Aervius.2016:

2. Yeah, contesting an area should only happen if combat is taking place.

This has already been fixed (since the time I wrote that post a while ago): now stealthed players don’t count for area control, in both WvW and SPvP.

Aervius.2016:

3. The damage compression is, imo, an issue. Besides, it’s not like the Steal -> Cnd -> Backstab is much slower. IMO, this would call for an overhaul of how instant-cast abilities should work in conjunction with Channeled abilities. All instant-cast abilities should interrupt channeled abilities.

The thing with insta-cast is there’s so much good gameplay revolving around it. Timing an insta-cast blind to stop an interrupt is really fun, for example, and very much the epitome of the “understand the animations” thing Anet was pushing with a lot of its design. I’d rather see a change to the “combo” than the removal of this one pretty cool mechanic.

Well, damage in WvW actually is a little bigger. C&D does more damage (due to the “PvE”/SPvP skill split). Full piece-by-piece Berserker gear is a little bit more aggressive than the SPvP Berserker amulet. I run around with, like, 106% crit damage or something (will be more once I actually get some ascended stuff); IIRC, you only get like 90% max in SPvP. Also, serious players eat food, which boosts your abilities even more.

But, at the end of the day, it’s because a lot of WvW players choose to use very offense-oriented gear. I certainly do! It’s very good in most situations, especially if your character is very mobile. But that does mean I could die to a single pumped-up Backstab. I just live with it. Seldom happens anyway.

AnemoneMeer.7182:

Why would you want to use something that actively removes your character’s armor details, or at least hides them.

If you just dye your character head-to-toe in one color, that does tend to happen.

Abyss looks real nice on certain leather pieces, though, because it’s deeper and more lustrous than other dark dyes.

My main advice is NEEDS MOAR CRITS.
This is a pretty good video of a guy running your general style of build.

Silverthorn.8576:

Again if you do a comparison between GW1 and 2 frenzy was 33% attack speed for 100% more dmg received and now it’s 100% attack speed for 50% more dmg and profession in GW1 did less dmg than in GW2…

Well, GW1 Frenzy also had 100% uptime and was easily cancelled by a second stance (which most warriors had, for chasing).
In GW2, Frenzy has a huge cooldown. And you have to burn some other ridiculous-cooldown skill like Endure Pain if someone counter-spikes you while you’re using it.

Which is not to say that quickness is a good idea — I don’t really like it very much as a mechanic myself. But, well, apples and oranges.

Silverthorn.8576:

The sin in GW1 was a perfect burst class which need skill to be played with, why? Because its skills have CD, it need to do combo between skills and most of that skills have requirement.

Many of the cooldowns were 4 seconds, though. IIRC, the big compressed spike had a 10-second cooldown.
Also, executing the combo was 1-2-3 easy (sometimes with a 4). It involved some work when you were making the build, sure, but most players in GW1 weren’t designing their own builds.
Most of the skill in playing assassin, like thief, was with timing and positioning. GW1 just made that a bigger deal because of the monk’s power to stop spikes cold.

I’m not sure who this is really going to affect. Let’s look at the most common WvW builds…

Bursty thieves spend very little time in stealth. They’re just using it to deliver Backstab as quickly as possible.

P/D thieves do stay in stealth a bunch, but they don’t really use their initiative for much. Your proposed change will force them to play a bit tighter with landing Cloak & Dagger, but largely they can continue doing the same gameplan.

Stomping people.

And then when they try to use their interrupt, you activate a split-second blind and finish them on the first go.

Or they’re thieves and they teleport but you also have a teleport so you just teleport right with them and finish the stomp.

Shortbow benefits a lot from high initiative regeneration, because you can very easily turn initiative into more damage or more evasion.

Try a build like Invincible Sword Princess, which has a ton of initiative gain.

• Full Zerk gear in PvE; pretty much any kind of offensive runes and sigils are fine (Fire is really good, though).
• You can swap Signet of Shadows or Signet of Agility for other utilities in a group setting.
• Get in the habit of actually activating your signets to get the good active effect or extra init.
• Sword/Pistol is a good second set for bow users because you interrupts and you can “tank” with Black Powder.

Hantu.2815:

Yes, I imagine 2 guilds fighting each other because one wants to do the COF chain events to go in and the others want to lock them out. Or someone espotted an enemy during the shatter fight and they are now fighting over who will get to loot a dragon chest and who will die and go to way point. This is FUN and EXCITING. This has a reward in the end of the fight, this gives the feeling of fulfilment and an adrenaline rush.

Now actually think about all of the friendly-fire and collateral-damage issues involved.

Also think about what happens when 30 guilds are all going to CoF, constantly.

Free-for-all PvP games generally work by creating territory. You’re here, your rivals are over there, there’s conflict happening in the border areas and occasional deep incursions, &c. If everyone’s just waypointing everywhere, it’s nonsense and chaos.

“This game is nice, but maybe it should be a completely different game.”

I’d kind of enjoy a free-for-all PvP game (with some specific features, at least: good combat mechanics, meaningful interaction between new and experienced characters, and no subscription), but GW2 really isn’t the right environment for it.

Your request doesn’t make sense without completely redesigning the environment. Everything about the PvE areas is set up to funnel players together for commitment-light cooperative play. Can you imagine a “dynamic event” with free-for-all PvP?