Guild Wars 2

Kaiyanwan.8521:

- new races
- new classes
- a fair amount of new skills (what did we get, 1 generic heal that is good for nothing , and one heal for each class, that is in regards to the GW history underwhelming)

Considering how hard it is for them to balance up the game (just take a look at the profession balance forum) as it is they would willingly pile up more problems for themselves?

Draknar.5748:

I believe she formed all of those alliances to be able to have a force strong enough to defend her while she looked for, and then ultimately found, the ley lines that would awaken that dragon. Speculation being that she has been controlled by that Elder Dragon this entire time.

I take it the dragon knew that she wouldn’t be able to accomplish all of this on her own without all of the heroes of Tyria stopping her before completion, so she needed a bunch of allies (the various alliances) to attack/defend/distract while she finished her awakening task.

I never played GW1, I haven’t read anything additional for lore, this is what I’ve gathered/surmised from playing the LS events, watching the cutscenes, and reading the dialogue between characters.

I believe what I’ve described is the basic plot. I felt everything was explained pretty well, I’m sorry you didn’t pick up on this stuff.

She made those alliances not just for them to act as her personal armies but especially for their magical and mechanical expertise.
All the members of the alliance represent a facet of magic in Tyria: flame legion- fire, dredge-earth, aetherblades- air and krait- water if you follow an elemental charting or like in this update where it follows the asuran principles of eternal alchemy: Static- Molten Alliance, Dynamics- Aetherblades and Synergetics- ToxicAlliance.

She didn’t choose them at random, she choose them so she can combine their magic and create pure magic, just like the magic that flows in a leyline and then manipulate it into awakening Mordremoth.

phaeris.7604:

When you’re using a warrior to try and say how weak thieves are, then can you imagine how far below an elementalist sits on that scale?

When you are using and elementalist to try to say how powerful thieves are can you imagine how far below an elementalist sits on the scale anywyas compared to any other profession in the game except rangers?

Seriously now, yes, eles have a pretty big disadvantage thanks to the ruthless and shortsighted nerfs back in the day but that’s the problem of the class not everyone elses. Eles must be buffed up to the level of all the other classes not all the other classes nerfed to the level of the ele.

Tom Gore.4035:

Where in the world would she be? Any ideas?

Where in the world is Scarlet Briar? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGufyFt6zQc
:D

My only problem, and everybody seems to gloss over it anyways, with this is how in the name of hell would they even be able to bring all of those back and make them work? Ok, things like zephir sanctum, the gauntlet, SAB or some of the newer story instances that can work as solo play, sure, but the big scale events like southsun, dragon bash, queens jubilee, the tower, marionette? I really can’t see how you can make an instance for those let alone find the number of players necessary for that content or how to party them up considering the overflow system or just the games coding in general.

Erukk.1408:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Actually I don’t think chances are slim at all. A lot of the devs have repeatedly expressed interest in going back to Cantha.

If we ever do go back, I can just imagine when their jumping puzzle designers are going to do with the urban sprawl that is Kaineng…

If zephir sanctum was any indication (hey that place looked really canthan) it will be great.

Bob F It.5701:

I’ve given up. I really find it hard to care about when I’m not given the chance to get the full picture. And if I’m meant to research the story beforehand, then what do I gain by playing anyway?

So basically if they do a recap (Aka the last 2 updates had tons of info, recaps, including trailers, stories, etc) for everything that happened before, whats’ the point of experiencing the content and if they don’t, what’s the point to return, if i don’t know what’s happened in the meantime….am i getting this right?

seacanari.4583:

let’s forge more pointy objects so we inpale her more >:D

What’s a few more compared to all we flushed till now, right?

Have you seen Gilgamesh from the Fate series? Gate of Babylon spam happens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSPKAB70xtg

And so Scarlet is defeated, impaled by the millions of exotics we flushed down the toilet.

Darkbattlemage.9612:

Note to self: Don’t watch Dawn of War videos on youtube prior to commenting I sound a little like Sindri there…just a very little bit.

SINDRIIIIIIIII…..oh good old Sindri, sorry couldn’t resist

If you asked me earlier this year, i would say no, even though i loved SAB and Zephir Sanctum. However they have really picked up the ball ever since the tower of nightmares update. The updates are becoming bigger, more story driven and dramatic and if they can keep this up then i am onboard.

Ok number one: story and gameplay segregation… it’s a thing now
“Dragon champion or not, Scarlet is still a sylvari. A sword will pierce her flesh, a hammer will crush her head. She may be stronger than normal, but not that much stronger.”
Well to play with the premise, the other dragon champions have never learned one extremely important but often overlooked tactic that Scarlet employs a lot: tactical retreat. :P everytime she gets into mortal danger, she runs away and then comes back with a vengeance. Most dragon champs stay until we kill them and feast upon the loot they drop.

It’s Mordremoth, they’ve been hinting at it ever since the marionette update. Also as munki said, most of the encounter will be a la the tower of nightmares with a large explorable area full of events (most likely scarlet minions will attack the adjacent areas and the order hqs as well) and instanced story missions.

Steel Fenrir.2791:

I’d like to see the war machine representations of the other races. Humans could have clockwork machina, Sylvari could have something similar to juggernauts in GW:Factions, Charr could have tank-like armored units, Norns.. cannon yaks? haha Please do make it more diversified.

Well Scarlet ‘was’ designing a rocket propelled dolyak, so you may never know.

Mikuchan.7261:

The Xes doesn’t have to be targets. They could be her secret bases she may have to gather information.
She has one right under the Durmand Priory which is obviously because it’s close to an immense source of knowledge. The same could apply for the other orders.
Lion’s Arch is the city that has the most knowledge about dragons and about killing them, so she would want to have knowledge of that as well.

The drill, wouldn’t make sense to drive that into either of the orders or Lion’s arch.
She’s after the dragons, not us.

The marionette is a weapons test and she probably tipped the Priory of it herself in order to draw people there to test the power of her weapon. After all she asks us -not- to die or give up as opposed to before when she has been all like “die die die, die die die”.

Fairly sure she’s building an anti-dragon kitten nal.

The marionette is actually an energy gathering device, the giant flying ion cannon is the actual weapon. The thumpers are scanners so she can map the magic leylines more accurately and determine the location of a certain dragon that’s sleeping underneath shiverpeaks in a certain central transfer chamber.

Guys the balance update is for the big features patch after the living story season 1 finale. It was never slated for today.

tattoohead.3217:

Zacchary.6183:

Roll another profession… unless you want to know how they work.

lol lame advice, I just rolled a THF as well and im enjoying it.

Considering the upcoming changes/rework the thief is supposedly gonna have, i would postpone any levelling or gearing up.

Karolis.4261:

Did he just seriously put 4 signet 25/30/0/0/15 build as an example of backstab damage ? Do you even imagine what would happen to said thief in any other situation then 1×1 vs clueless glassies with no situational awarness skills ?

We do. Problem is he doesn’t so instead he romanticizes this incredible damage burst tanky build that can shadowstep and permastealth at the same time. sigh if only thieves were 1/4 that powerful.

Luke.4562:

The fact the survivability of the Thief is reduced while playing with this build doesn’t really matters. In a teamfight it’s enough if they go for an istantshot attack on the focused target, after that he wasted all his Defensive cooldowns, to achieve a sure kill, then the Thief can stealth and reset the fight, giving an huge advantage to his team.

The signet build can’t do anything of what you listed in there: it has no defensive cooldowns or stealth longer than 3/4 seconds, no way to acces stealth outside CnD which needs an enemy to land (variants can use the heal for stealth but you need to go full signet on utilities then), you sit around 12k worth of health with no damage mitigation or any good condi removal and the 2 teleports it has need a target to work so you can’t shadowstep away unless you use shortbow but if you do the burst you generally don’t have the ini to use infiltrators arrow.

Basically you fire all your signets, CnD and backstab (add in the devourer venom for 2 secs of immo variant but you need to use signet of malice so no stealth outside of CnD then). You get 3 tries max (3 tries if the target doesn’t move or use any abilities for 10 secs) and then you need to hs away if you still have some ini left. In the meantime using prot, aegis, block, invulnerability, stun, dazes, knockdowns, stealth, teleports or just a good old dodge can basically counter the burst completely.

Just don’t panic and use those wisely. If i’m ambushed by one on my mesmer a decoy, blink, phase retreat, blurred frenzy, riposte or distortion is more than enough to escape and then killing the thief is trivial afterwards.

Plus ,the fact that during a fight you can get focused, blow your defenses and someone can assasinate you is just part of how pvp works in all MMOs. It could have been a dps guard, condi engi/necro, etc and still ended the same way.

Ps: since it seems you play necro a simple deathshroud- doom or reapers mark would negate the burst, then place marks at your location (chillblains, mark of blood). Now the thief can’t burst you down and will be forced to flee. Use any other cc you have or just get straight to business and use signet of spite. Gz now the thief is dead.

Forzani.2584:

So would I.

I have played many of these type of games. They all try and improve things as they go forward. When something is really broken, they usually try and put the repair on the front burner. I have never seen a developer ignore something so outlandish, broken and flawed as this.

Sorry, but have you seen condi/bunker meta insanity going on in wvw and pvp? AND THIEF, OUT OF ALL THE THINGS, IS THE PROBLEM?
Dear God, it doesn’t matter if thieves could only autoattack at this point, they’ll still be too OPeee to fight against according to some. Wait actually if you think about it, the fact a thief can attack is quite a broken, despicable mechanic as well that must be removed. My loot bags shouldn’t fight back, right?

Viking Jorun.5413:

Guys, stop worrying. In PvP and WvW, conditions reign supreme. They wouldn’t make a huge change to critical damage simply to balance PvE in a PvP-oriented game. The most likely option is that they’ll add a “critical cap” throttle to bosses, increasing the viability of all options in PvE rather than simply nerfing zerk specs across the board. This will average the times any party of any comp will speed run a dungeon, and not kill any viability in PvP/WvW (except VS keep lords – which face it, go down way too quickly).

The other option is improve it’s scaling with power, increasing it’s viability against conditions in PvP/WvW, but making the “zerk meta” of PvE even worse.

A combination of the two would be the best option, IMO.

According to your suggestion, rampager becomes the new PVE meta and we are back to where we started.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Cynz.9437:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Cynz.9437:

this post was made by one of the best thieves out there
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Backstab-1/page/2#post3235603

Isn’t that guy an elementalist? …

Caed? no

Your link goes to a guy called silvermember for me

Look one higher up, Narcarsis is Caed (See signature)

Scarlet….your mecha may be silly but at least it has a really stylish pair of boots (they are inbuilt into the mechs feet but let it roll)

Xyonon.3987:

So it equals to ~6% crit chance for everyone – neat o.O Why should one not take this? Again the “passive dmg doesn’t exist” disease?

Because bearbow is the one and true way i guess.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I want them to remove in-combat slow down from the game. That is one of the most annoying mechanics, and one of my pet peeves. I hate missing a jump and falling down a cliff, just because a random ambient creature is angry at me.

That aggroed bunny is really really…really angry :P its seething inner rage makes your character experience incredible fear thus reducing your movement speed. See? It makes sense

Xyonon.3987:

may I ask what “spotter” means? ._.’’

Master trait in the Marksmanship line: Gives 150 precision to all players in a 600 radius of the ranger
Ps: it also effects you

woeye.2753:

Or they could simply add bosses with super high armor and low health (which would favor condition damage) instead of giving all bosses super high health (with favors direct damage).

But yeah, a game designed by warriors for warriors. What do you expect? ;-)

There are other classes who are based around direct damage in the game you know, like thieves for example. Hell that’s one thing out of their very short list of things they can do for the group that is not highly situational (group stealth for skipping and permablind for trash). Your little suggestion would just make thieves as useful as a bearbow in that encounter since the condis are absolutely laughable on a thief.

KantidMM.6291:

I think Anet want to make balance between DPS and Support builds in a party.
May be they will create special condition for bosses ( and perhaps not only for them). That condition will weaken the party (like weakness but more powerfull). And the party will need to clean this buff. That is why support builds will be needed in party…
And may be Anet try to fix some of exploits…

This will just make guardians even more invaluable since they can offer great support and damage.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I will gladly roll the dice and hope we can get something healthier than this toxic thing.

Unless you start nerfing all the active defense abilities, you’ll juat swap this dps meta for another one. And if you nerf them further than this we’re back to the trinity which will simply create a similar toxic meta but applied to each class individually and their usefulness for each encounter (this will also phase out some classes from some encounters completely…bye bye rangers).
There’s literally no way to fix the current meta without going back to trinity or just creating the next dps meta and not solving anything

Belenwyn.8674:

You can still run glass builds. But if Arenanet hits the right spot during the coming process the glass build will not longer the fastest way to complete the majority of the dungeons.

Basically, all they’ll end up doing is swap the current DPS meta for another meta and things will resume as usual with whinning about the new meta (see pvp condi bombing meta of doom). Nothing gained but with great possibility of losing much.

bump another bug which should have been fixed by now

Bump yeah this bug should have been fixed by now. Also i consider variant 2 to be the best one since it leaves the skill functioning and it’s general usage intact.

Terrahero.9358:

Thats the same argument i hear when people talk about Thieves spamming blind “its all we got”.
Or Thieves staggering mobility, teleporting and blinking all over the place “thats all we got to stay alive”
Or the boatload of evades. “yah, we need that to not die”

Thieves have more then just Stealth to stay alive, a lot more. And what the OP suggests isnt going to effect Stealth being used defensively, but Stealth being used offensively.

Question: do you even play thief? And i’m not talking here about playing just a bit, i mean took that thief to 80 and done a significant amount of the games content. If would do that you would understand why all of those tricks are necessary to even stay alive……..

Thieves have only one way to mitigate damage: not getting hit in the first place; and all those blinds (blind on stealth, offhand pistol 5# and d/p 3#), blinks (shadowstep, inifltrators arrow and sword 2#….which is already nerfed pretty badly) and evades (inbuild evade on almost any weaponset, feline grace and acces to vigor) are there for that reason.

It’s like complaining that a guardian has acces to 100% uptime protection, regen, blocks, reflects and healing or 100% vigor uptime engineers, mesmers, etc; when the entire survivability of the class is based on those things.

“PvE would need more changes in vigor/endurance/dodging, aegis/blocking, protection uptime, aggro mechanic, AI scripts, conditions from enemies (even as far as boss-unique conditions in explorable dungeons or high level FotM, because those things should be meant to be complex and demanding, even if available for everyone, so complicating them with extra mechanics is ok, while introducing too many different things in open PvE or personal story wouldn’t be fine)”

I definitely agree that if such revision would be made it must be taken with utmost care.
Simply making current dungeons harder with the express intent of combating zerker meta and stacking would be foolish to say the least thanks to the current economy.
In the end these changes would just shift the zerker meta to a more defensive meta but at the cost of making the dungeon paths longer (thanks to the lower dps), annoying, dangerous, possible failure of completing it and even and even excluding some classes completely from the meta. In other words you ultimately changed nothing.
If you push too far it’ll just be too much work for its rewards, and players will go with the path of least resistance and go do something more profitable and easier.

Don’t forget that thanks to the kneejerk nerfs that farming, etc sustained from Anet and the large amounts of gold needed for crafting, etc, many of these easy dungeons are now one of the main ways to make gold fast and easy, hence their popularity.

Also upping the rewards of harder, more demanding content also doesn’t seem to work in the slightest as evidenced by the reaction the community had to something like the aetherbalde path added in TA, aka very few ppl run it anymore despite having better loot than the other ones and all of this can be attributed to it’s difficulty and annoying mechanics.

Cynz.9437:

ALL other class skills go on FULL cool down if they miss.
They are even punished if they are interrupted while using a skill.

The thief skills are the only ones in the game that are not punished for missing.

They should be.

You miss the fact that thief skills are already balanced around the fact they are spammable. They generally have the lowest damage coeficients in the game and very short duration conditions and interrupts.
Also other classes don’t have a single cooldown covering both weaponsets like thieves do. A thief without initiative can only autoattack while another class would just switch up to their secondary weaponset and have acces to another full rotation.

I’m pretty surprised ppl are still asking for these kneejerk nerfs considering thief is barely holding onto to the current meta as it is. Also i love how condi bombing necros and engies, hambow warrs (even after the last nerf to this build it’s still pretty powerful and popular…and brainless) insane bunker guards, etc aren’t a problem but thieves somehow are…..yeah sure guys.

Tbh it’s either Primordius (the most likely) or the mysterious red briar she saw during her vision of the Eternal Alchemy (less likely but still intriguiging). Either way this will be interesting…..i hope

None tbh. If i really need to choose one i would say eles are a bit more viable thanks to the conjured weapons but then again playing as a mobile weapon dispenser is a bit underwhelming.

xmtrcv.5236:

Thief
>We have also reduced the effectiveness of high-evasion thieves by reducing vigor uptime and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents thieves from evading and easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.).
>Also, we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line

Cognitive dissonance at it’s worst

you do realize HtC gets you killed 80% of the time, AR is a very subpar heal, S/p is barely functional so the buff to pistol whip is useless, PT will barely give you a few hundred hp even with full berserker. So basically only 2 of those are buffs and even those are debatable.

fefefelix.4370:

Is not buff. Is a MASSSSSSSIVE buff.

They can take their MASSSSIVE BUFF and s……calm down, calm down, don’t get infracted, zennnnnn…ok i’m good.

This entire patch is just……sad really. After all this time, all this fighting with us here on the forums over the patch, etc……they went ahead full speed with not a single alteration to what they originally wanted to do. I guess the balance team truly lives in wonderland. I would have a few words of wisdom to impart to some ppl but i fear i’ll get infracted or banned if i do.

Astralporing.1957:

There are topics about all of those, and more. Even about OP rangers (lol). You were saying?

Last time i checked they aren’t being nerfed to the point their class only has 2 viable builds in the case of the thief D/D backstab build and the P/D conid build both of them being very lackluster builds to begin with (that’s why very few use them). But how i said once you won’t have any scapegoat to blame, the devs will come and start anew their nerf cycle on the most complained build or profession, just pray it won’t be yours. The ele balance updates we had back in the summer are a dark reminder of what the balance team is capable of.

I have to say i really love this thread. It really shows how many people glamorized this entire class as a an unkillable super mega terrible damage burst godmode all of this based on very little if absolutely no experience of actually playing the class.

Oh yes, how strong and powerful stealth is, how game breaking it is, oh yes, oh yes how we need to nerf them for the good of this games balance….but not the insane condi necros and engis, the perplexity abusing engis, the menagerie necros and rangers (if this continues those playstyles will start to resembles an RTS), cc warrs, etc etc or any other cheese build from any other class. Oh yes nerf thieves down but don’t you dare touch my class and it’s low risk high, reward builds, no no cause mine is not op but theirs are cause they have stealth.

Don’t you worry your little hearts they are going to nerf into the ground both the stealth and non stealth thief builds (see the dec 10th balance patch) and thieves will be almost out of the meta. But once they are out, beware because now your classes and builds will be on the chopping block, especially the very complained ones like hambows warriors who are already gonna start suffer some nerfs next patch. We’ll see how fun it is when the shoe is in the other foot.

Traveller.7496

Don’t worry, more Scarlet is already underway.

Only for one or two more patches. Her “do not touch” towers will be the finale.

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol, I don’t have to prove anything! You arent my audience! Can’t believe that you claimed you have “friends” tracking me! Lol obsession!

How is your warrior? Can you prove you have warrior experience?

Wow Sandy why all the anger? Seriously chill out dude, all this high blood pressure is not good for you and if something happens to you who else is gonna tell us that “permastealth” thieves are op 50 times a day……..wait is that a bad thing? :P

If they do ever add it as a gemstore skin i would love to see how would they make the male version look like (and hopefully not make the 2 versions look like they came from two different sets…i’m looking at you phoenix armor).

Burnfall.9573:

As the saying goes, “when one violate the rule of balance, so shall their end be violated”

I’m pretty sure that warrants an infraction for the sexual assault “undertones” present in the quote.

UrMom.4205:

Yup, I moved on to a mesmer, honestly…i like it better than my thief

The lack of mobility is annoying but it is a very fun class. Also i give you warm welcome to the mesmer ranks…….I just hope we won’t be the next class to be nerfed into the ground in the next balance cycle :P

Haralin.1473:

the only thing i hate is the perma stealth this should get a cooldown. Also i dont like the cowardness of 70% of the thiefs i met. They try to kill you in the first 20 sec. doesnt work run away in stealth and starts laughing.

BTW Granade 1 is no autoattack!

And stealth reduces the damage you take the condition damage cause as i know you can lose conditon when going in stealth.

The stealth condition cleansing is the only realiable condi cleanse thieves get outside shadowstep. All the other condi cleansers either cleanse only one or a limited set of conditions (for example: withdraw cures chilled, crippled and immobilized while signet of agility cures all types but only one). That’s the reason so many thieves run with runes of lyssa and basilisk venom

phaeris.7604:

You picked a bad class to switch to Brett!

People just hate stealth types in every game, and rangers seem to get lumped in for some reason.

Anet seems to just adore heavies and mesmers.

Believe me, mesmers had their unfair share of nerfs. Up until the last 3 months mesmers were nerfed every single patch. And even like that, it’s only recently they started really buffing them up again…….though they seems to concentrate on mantras a lot for some reason.