Guild Wars 2

I like the suggestion in the other thread where rams are simply immune to arrow cart damage.

It would also be nice if they introduced a new boon that effectively does what protection does, but does it against siege damage. You could then give it to rams so players could get a 8 second buff on a 24 second cooldown to protect everyone around the ram by taking 30% less damage from siege. This way 3 rams could provide full coverage to take less damage.

It would also be nice if only arrow carts on walls actually did the extra damage that way attackers could actually do something about the damage they’re taking.

Nothing said is really doing anything to make it more fun other than adjusting the maps. The whole WvW meta is just too focused on zerg vs zerg combat. Everything on the list is really just bug fixes and tweaks.

We need the whole WvW ruleset changed to make the map itself more engaging. Something to encourage zergs to split up to take different objectives at the same time. Make it so you can’t rush in and take SM you need to first have all your stuff. Just things to add some element of strategy and tactics to the game.

Right now I feel like WvW is nothing but a game of cat and mouse where the cat is a giant 50+ player zerg and the mouse is a giant 45+ player zerg running around the map in a circle in the same direction until one catches up to the other. And unfortunately, those of us who like to roam and do smaller scale stuff end up being ran over by these zergs while they accomplish next to nothing.

I think improving siege damage is a positive thing, but they didn’t do it in an intelligent manner.

Siege built within a structure should be given a damage bonus of say 15% against enemy players and siege but -50% damage to enemy structures. Siege built on a wall of a structure you control would gain an additional 15% (30% damage increase) and arrowcarts would gain an additional 50% (65% total) when built on a wall.

This way you have defenders benefiting from actually defending.
Siege that can do real damage to the opposing forces can actually be countered because it’s on the wall.
Stacked carts in the lord’s room won’t win a fight alone.

You could then improve this method by giving defenders on a wall +25% added range to projectiles. You could have mini-outmanned buffs where defenders would gain protection if outnumbered 5:1 or something along those lines.

I couldn’t play last night due to family obligations so I didn’t test it out. What did the note about CnD do? I was expecting it to effectively have a 100% chance to crit if you have the trait to crit from stealth. Is this not the case? Is it honestly just going to crit if you’re stupid enough to use CnD while in stealth?

I also agree and don’t agree with the shortbow issue. It should never have been homing, that’s obvious. No other projectile is homing (actually this could be a lie, can Warrior Rifle miss or is it like Pistols where there really isn’t a projectile?). The issue now is the projectile’s speed. If you’re not going to make it homing then the projectile’s speed should match the Ranger’s shortbow projectile speed. Otherwise you just put the thief in the same position Rangers were in 6 months ago where people will just sidestep all the shots.

Mug I actually am indifferent on. It was obvious they were going to nerf it because they kept harping on the thief’s burst and have mentioned mug by name repeatedly. I’m also not concerned with the change because it just means I’ll use the spell differently. Since I don’t run glass it was never a real burst skill for me so I’m cool with the change.

I also agree with dagger off-hand. If CnD doesn’t gain the benefit of the Hidden Killer and have a 100% chance to crit when used to stealth it’s absolutely useless because no one will use it from stealth it’s simply too expensive for the damage it does. And I honestly can’t believe dancing dagger hasn’t been changed already. The skill isn’t worth 2 initiative let alone 4.

I’m also very annoyed that pistol hasn’t gotten any attention at all. The whole set is awful aside from black powder for the offhand. Not a single other thing about the weapon is worth using. I’d argue not even Pistol Whip.

The sword also doesn’t compliment stealth at all like you said. I really wish the sword had a burst option somewhere, but it’s all just sustained damage with the high damage ‘burst’ coming from autoattack. Tactical strike really should do something more as a stealth move. Daze isn’t as powerful as you’d think it would be with a short duration like it has. Since it’s a sword why not give it a parry/riposte move where you block the next attack within 5 seconds and immediately counter attack or something.

Now like I said, I haven’t played so I haven’t messed with the signets yet so I don’t know. But I’m sure your analysis is pretty much spot on.

I fail to see how thieves are overpowered in WvW. Perhaps overpowered against the class you play. But hardly overpowered. Especially when you consider 90% of WvW is zerg on zerg and thieves play no functional role in that at all.

And on the plus side Mug can’t crit anymore so it only hits for about 1.5-2k. Reasonable hit to their burst considering it crit for a ton with a 100% chance to crit with traits.

PearlGore.7419:

Is it useful for PvE?

There even boons in PVE?

Is there a reason you think you should be able to down a ranger’s pet without actually targeting the pet? And is your strafe key broken? Is there a reason you’re not just walking in circles away from pets? Because they’re still easy to avoid even with the changes 4 months ago.

Awww

But since we’re here now… gimme pics!

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Atherakhia.4086:

Dante.1508:

Honestly how can they not split the skills, think about it, three different play modes need three different balancing, seems pretty basic to me…

Because the only limiting factor should be damage. I don’t see how a skill can work differently from one game mode to the next in the same game.

And that is exactly what they are doing in today’s patch, splitting the damage numbers of certain skills between game modes. They should do this for more skills, but it is a start.

CD’s should be fair game as well imo.

Cooldowns are sketchy, but are at least somewhat easier to deal with. Especially for longer cooldowns and skills.

But the revealed mechanic for example should either have stayed 4s or moved back to 3s everywhere. It will be very painful switching from WvW to sPvP as a thief when your entire playstyle has to shift dramatically.

Anyone mind sharing what the new skins look like? And are they 10-20badges each like the others?

you know what this thread needs? Pictures of the new stuff for those of us who work for a living!

Dante.1508:

Honestly how can they not split the skills, think about it, three different play modes need three different balancing, seems pretty basic to me…

Because the only limiting factor should be damage. I don’t see how a skill can work differently from one game mode to the next in the same game.

Someone needs to post the new skins and gem items! I’m curious what the quiver looks like especially since I’d much rather turn my capacitor into a quiver than craft it!

Terrible idea.

This is one game, not 3. It’s bad enough the devs are turning it into 2 different games because of WvW and sPvP. The only thing that should be an issue in sPvP or WvW is PvE levels of damage. This is why you just introduce another varibale into the formula that provides a reduction in damage for WvW and another for sPvP.

But to have true mechanical difference between spells in one game or the other? That’s a horrible idea because players who actually play different areas of the game won’t be able to seamlessly transition between them.

Look at the thief come next patch. In sPvP the revealed debuff will remain at 4 seconds. But the rest of the game it will be 3 seconds. This may sound like a minor thing, but it’s something the entire class is designed around and players will have a lot of trouble transitioning from WvW to sPvP and back again because of it.

There’s no reason, aside from damage, that a skill would be overpowered in one aspect of the game and not the others. Legitimate balance issues are required sometimes. But mechanical differences in skills shouldn’t happen.

Neverwinter starts today. That would be a fun universe to explore if we could leave Drizz’t out of it but still bring in the Drow.

Sounds good. I’m already in T8 so I’m looking forward to whoever shows up. I have a small group of 4 of us left from our old TBW days in Shadowbane roaming around and either joining with or fighting against you all.

Perhaps the solution would be to cut treb range in half so you can’t treb one structure while safely locked away in another. In exchange, double the damage so they’re more valuable on the battle field instead of just building 10 catas to burn down a wall in 30 seconds.

So in summary what’s going on? A handful of guilds will be moving to each of the T8 servers in the hopes of running into each other? Or were all going to one T8 server? Which?

Don’t know who you are, but I’m bored at work so figured I’d respond to the thread all the same. Good luck whoever you are with whatever it is you’re doing.

kostbabis.8791:

Sprawl.3891:

even with nerf ele can still disengage from any fight they want

As people already pointed out ..basically yeah
The only thing that just got much harder is engaging and catching up .
If i use it from 1,201 range to engage it will go in full cd cause no one in his right mind will let me hit.So while i tried to engage with it i was punished..
Dont fool yourself the 20 sec cooldown will only work if you use it in close range or point blank for extra damage..this change does nothing sensible to fix the problem

then don’t use it from 1201 range? Every other skill with the exception of bows has this issue. I presume the indicator on the button will work so you’ll know if you’re in range or not.

I’ve never been harrassed, but I have been left out. I mostly WvW and the thief just isn’t providing enough to the current meta for me to contirbute. I feel like all I do is blast finishers and shoot my shortbow at range until we’re at the stage we’re mopping things up or running for our lives.

I will also agree with what Jinks has said. I haven’t PvP’d with anyone else yet, but you’d be surprised how many thieves out there are willing to help with questions and answers about the class. I had an hour long discussion just the other day with a thief I never met before that day about issues I was having.

I don’t know/care if steal should take boons or simply remove boons. But it should do something against boons. The Mug trait would no longer deal damage, but would put a debuff on the target making it so they can’t get new boons for X seconds.

I’d also change steal so it had a 50% chance to stealth you (trait increases this to 100% and reduce the cooldown) as you’re clearly not a very good thief if you’re caught doing it!

I’d also like to see the ability gained when attacking another thief changed. While it’s useful, I think the thief class has enough ways to stealth that it doesn’t need to steal a new one. Hell, why not make it so instead of stealing from a thief you put a rotten egg in their pocket and you can see them when stealthed for 5 seconds.

I started the thief after the 4s change so I didn’t have to adjust my playstyle any and I grew into the 4s reveal naturally so it all feels fluid enough for me. That said, I agree that something like the revealed debuff is so central to the thief’s overall playstyle that having it different between different parts of the game is a huge mistake.

I don’t care if they keep 4s or reduce to 3s. But the mechanic should be the same for the class regardless of where you play. I know I won’t be able to adjust to 2 different timers and will have to quit WvW or sPvP on the Thief class.

In my opinion, the weapon sets and field aren’t what make this spec powerful, it’s the initiative regen available to the class. the whole point behind D/P is to trade offense (CnD burst) with defense (AE Blind and Initiative heavy stealth). The only way D/P remains competetive is via high initiative regen which allows it to maintain the high burst delivered from backstab and stealth spam.

If they were going to legitimately try and fix this spec, they’d almost certainly look at initiative regen before considering changing the leap finisher. And that has me concerned.

What is D/P doing that D/D isn’t? D/P is trading burst via CnD in favor of defense for BP and field use. This is intended and not the problem. What is the problem? It’s the initiative regen. And if ANet agrees with this assessment, the whole class will pay the price because this class doesn’t provide enough burst to down bunkers and when geared as a bunker you can barely provide the burst to down glass.

If we want to have an honest discussion about this class than be realistic in approaching the real issues.

Elidath.5679:

Atherakhia.4086:

Attack a keep and you get 10pts. Hold the keep for the second hour and you get +2 points. Holding a keep for each additional hour after the second will net you +1 point. Defending a keep against invaders that spawn orange swords will give you +5pts once per hour.

This way if you actually played the game the way it was meant to be played and actually defended an objective you would be rewarded. If you capture a point you’re still rewarded. If you run unopposed for 8 hours, when people login later in the day to reclaim the tower, they’ve effectively countered all the points you contributed by doing nothing but capping points and alt+tabing and reading the forums all day.

And then best way to maintain a lead is to totally abandon the map to the ennemy. He’ll get some starting points and virtually nothing after those. Yay for metagame

Just think about something : why are those people unopposed ? Because you (as in “your world’s players”, not you personnally) weren’t there. Why should they be punished for you not defending your map ?
It being inconvenient for you isn’t a balance issue.

Right, but they’re being rewarded for doing nothing all day. Where as players who actually have to contribute are rewarded the same amount for 10x the work/effort. It’s a legitimate balance issue and games in the past have come up with systems to resolve it.

Shadowbane for example had siege windows where the attackers would choose a window of X hours, but the defenders could choose the time within that window to defend. This clearly isn’t going to work here given the pace of the game, but it doesn’t change the fact that off-hour siege is a legitimate issure that needs to be resolved.

Could be done in GW2 where if you take a camp and hold it for 2 hours it can’t be reseiged for 4 hours etc. I’m not paid enough to come up with a viable option. Only care enough to voice my concerns.

Just remove the silly attacks and knockbacks and such in WvW. If you’re downed, you should provide a buff to allies or a debuff to enemies and nothing else. PvE is arguably fine.

“OMG! They killed Kenny!” == All friendly players within 10 yards of Kenny gain swiftness for 5 seconds as they rush to his aid. All enemy players within 10 yards of Kenny move 10% slower for 5 seconds as they try to avoid Kenny’s body parts and pool of blood.

Reiven.2543:

Atherakhia.4086:

2.) Nighttime Coverage: It’s very aggrivating to completely dominate your tier all day long, but still never manage to get anywhere because from the hours of 2am till noon your server loses every single point because of work/school. After the initial cap, if you’re not actively defending something (because no one is attacking) you really shouldn’t get the same number of points.

I thought people would work out after a few months that everyone has different peak times. It really is childish and selfish to even suggest a system where one persons efforts are worth more than another simply because they don’t play in your peak times or have school/work.

Any players contribution to their server should be rewarded and accounted for, but you can’t design a game that shows favortism to those who play the game unopposed and take over everything without any effort at all. that’s the problem right now… you think the system shouldn’t be changed because the system shouldn’t favor anyone in particular, but the system currently does favor people: those who play from 2am to noon every day.

The system should be changed where bonus points are given for attacking a keep and claiming it, bonus points are given for defending a keep. But once you have the keep and no one attempts to reclaim it? No points should be awarded for that, and if they must, they should be so small in value, that you should be able to make up for their gains by simply recapturing the tower back a few hours later.

For example:

Attack a keep and you get 10pts. Hold the keep for the second hour and you get +2 points. Holding a keep for each additional hour after the second will net you +1 point. Defending a keep against invaders that spawn orange swords will give you +5pts once per hour.

This way if you actually played the game the way it was meant to be played and actually defended an objective you would be rewarded. If you capture a point you’re still rewarded. If you run unopposed for 8 hours, when people login later in the day to reclaim the tower, they’ve effectively countered all the points you contributed by doing nothing but capping points and alt+tabing and reading the forums all day.

Minion of Vey.4398:

I want to know why Ranger swoop traveling 1100 range on a 12s cooldown is fine (which I don’t even mind)

But eles traveling 1200 range on a 20s cooldown is not. Yes I know it’s 1500 atm. Why not just bump it to 1200 as intended and call it a day? Why FORTY seconds to move around with it as well?

That’s easy.

Rangers don’t have protection, flash, stuns, 5 different heals, condition removal, burst, etc.

Now that said, 40 seconds is stupid. Simply changing swoop and rtl to be impacted by movement impairing skills like rush is would have been a better solution.

I agree with the above comments that this method of boon hate is a terrible idea. It won’t help the thief against real boon heavy classes like mesmers, guardians, and elementalists because they can reapply the majority of boons instantly and the random nature of stealing them. It will only have an impact on the easily abused mechanics like HGH 25might stack or classes like thieves and warriors that don’t have many boons and they’re on long cooldowns.

Without a mechanic to make the target incapable of gaining new boons for a brief period of time, this whole system will have no function use whatsoever.

I don’t think the skills need a cooldown. Heartseeker is the only one that can really be abused, and even that can be avoided fairly well. Unlike other classes, if a move is missed the initiative is still used so that kind of balances it out.

I think the larger problem is simply initiative regen. It’s the initiative regen that makes things like the d/p build seem overpowered. It’s the regen that allows you to maintain pressure and still spam 4 heartseekers into a target at 50%.

If you’re going to want to tone down thief burst then the place to do it is initiative regen. It isn’t by putting cooldowns on skills.

It’s amazing what the organized can do against the disorganized. All it would have taken was one group of 5 people to engage you and it would have been over.

The largest problems I find with WvW right now are:

1.) Zergs: There’s just no reason to not zerg right now and no other form of play is really rewarded other than zerging. The way many classes are designed right now, they just don’t bring enough to a zerg to warrant bringing along. Thieves for example offer absolutely nothing to a zerg. Rangers only offer a water field. Warriors only bring hammers. Unless something is done to fix the zerging problem, people will end up abandoning these classes in favor of Mesmers, Eles, and Guardians much like we’ve seen going on for the past 3 months now.

2.) Nighttime Coverage: It’s very aggrivating to completely dominate your tier all day long, but still never manage to get anywhere because from the hours of 2am till noon your server loses every single point because of work/school. After the initial cap, if you’re not actively defending something (because no one is attacking) you really shouldn’t get the same number of points.

3.) AE: This has been discussed repeatedly on this forum and others. Many seem to want the cap removed, others want it just slightly increased, and others still want only harmful AE’s increased in cap while beneficial ones/boons are left alone. I fit in the last camp, but I’m very worried that any change to AE without first reviewing the AE offered by many classes will be disastrous because we already see many people rerolling away from Warriors, Thieves, and Rangers. A change to AE without first giving these classes respectable AE of their own will just increase the trend.

4.) Siege: Being able to siege surrounding structures while safely within another structure’s walls kind of defeats the whole purpose of attackers and defenders. Especially when defending siege can’t return fire back due to geometry and elevation. The whole point behind siege is to give defenders something to focus on instead of just sitting in the lord room waiting for the walls to come crumbling down. But the way things work right now, defenders are actually at a distinct disadvantage (which makes no sense whatsoever).

I think people are less vocal about this change because the thief class is still forced into a predominantly burst role and S/D offers no real burst. This means in order to get burst you have to use d/p or d/d in the other slot which means no shortbow which mans your ranged AE is removed (of course sword is AE in exchange so /shrug). This on top of the loss of burst from Mug and people see the class losing its identity a little.

Now all that said, I made a Rogue for Sword/Dagger, but after having played it for a while I found it very difficult to use effectively. I’m hoping the new pathing really changes things. But even still, I found Sword/Pistol more valuable because if you’re using Sword, you know you’re not coming for damage and Pistol offers more utility. Plus stealth and sword don’t really mix all that well so CnD is of questionable use.

I’m still having the same problem you guys are having, but you’re one up on me since you’ve at least got a build you’re working on. Currently I have valk armor with cavalier trinkets/accessories and I’m running a 10/30/30 build. still not survivable enough for my tastes, but I haven’t been a thief for long so still learning the ropes.

How are the other healing skills and traits for the thief? Do they have reasonable coefficients? The interview made it sound like it would be a 1.0 coefficient. If so, and the other healing skills work well for the thief, maybe we’ll see a resurgence of the condition builds with insane healing and bunker potential with apothecary much like how rangers currently play.

People still use it in sPvP. At least now the formula will put it inline with retaliation. The damage adjustment is warranted. Just because something is easy to avoid or negate doesn’t mean you make it insanely powerful to compensate for it. Look at how easy conditions are to remove and you don’t see them ticking for 10k at 25stacks.

If the damage was going to be left alone, they should have changed confusion to be consumed once you dealt damage. If not, then have it go back to the formula it was months ago and currently still is in sPvP.

Siege in general is kind of wonky in this game. Why should you be able to place a treb in your tower and hit a surrounding tower completely immune to attack? Same with things like cannons being able to hit other towers and such.

The whole point to siege is supposed to give defenders something to do to legitimately defend their structures. The attackers should never have the advantage when sieging an enemy structure. And that’s just not the case in this game.

I’d suggest full soldier’s gear to no one except a freshly minted 80 who needs to cash out on their karma. There’s almost always a better option for every slot but the goal is still the same and however you choose to get there fine.

My goal regardless of class I play is:
Maximize power over all stats.
Get 2.5k armor at a minimum.
Get 15k hp at a minimum.

Most classes can do this without any real effort. Thief is tricky, but still can be done without soldiers. If you can get the above though you aren’t going to be 2 shot by glass cannons and you aren’t going to be killed in 2 conditions.

But aside from that, you’ll need to decide on what type of role you want to play. If you want to be a hammer warrior you’ll obviously want more toughness. If you’re a ranger you may want consider condition and ignore power and crit completely (that’s the advantage condition damage has as you don’t need 3 stats to make it effective) and go with Apothecary. Ele’s may want a lot of Clerics.

Arkanfel.8403:

Atherakhia.4086:

PVT is not the gear you want on any class.

In case anyone was wondering what that strange sound was, it was Atherakhia’s credibility leaping out the window after it read this line.

:(

Guess I’m alone in choosing Knights, Cavalier, Valkyre, or Apothecary over PTV gear on my chars. My bad guys. Stick to PTV.

I personally don’t like this method of using boon hate. Boon Hate would have been much more powerful and much more dynamic if skills would simply remove all boons on the target and put a debuff on the target making them incapable of gaining new boons for X seconds. This method adds a new dynamic to the game and makes players choose the right time to use them and how to best use them.

A passive increase is a complete waste of time because all we’re going to see is this % damage mechanic adjusted every single patch from now until this game closes shop.

PVT is not the gear you want on any class. That said, you will most certainly want toughness and/or vit depending on the class.

Knights, Valkyre, Cavalier, Apothecary, etc. Only time you don’t need toughness is if you’re roaming in groups smaller than 10 where heavy burst could make a difference. In zerg on zerg though? You’ll want toughness.

Have any of you people played a game without AE caps? WoW at release? DAoC? It’s awful and those games were designed in a way to account for it. This game can’t handle it without enormous effort spent redesigning it from the ground up.

Up the offensive spell cap to 10, leave the defensive spell cap at 5 and call it a day. Any more than that and ANet isn’t prepared to adjust the game properly to make sure it works. Even increasing it to 10 is going to grossly overpower certain classes while invalidating the need for others.

They need to give each weapon at least one movement skill so Greatsword doesn’t feel so mandatory. Then just change stomp to a 900 yard leaping attack and you’ve pretty much fixed the whole class.

He used vengeance.

The more irritating thing is when you run your scenario, and because your class has a crappy attack you can’t deal enough damage to kill the opponent before they kill you even though they were downed first.

The whole downed mechanic is awful. They should just allow downed players to provide buffs or debuffs to surrounding targets. Make all classes provide the same buffs and debuffs. And remove all the stupid secondary skills like stealthing, making a clone, AE knockback, etc.

Luthan.5236:

Greatsword 5 – Rush – it says(according to wiki; haven’t checked myself, I’m not playing a warrior, only using 5 charslots and not playing every class):

“Charge and strike your foe.”

So to me it seems this should be the same as Ride the Lighting. Main intended use to attack and get to a target(and maybe get to someone at low health that is running away from you).

Also he is carrying his heavy armor. This should make him exhausted. And it’s the skill 5… skill with usually the longest cd.

20 seconds really seems a bit low. They also should change this then. At least if he is not using it to target someone(not hitting someone).

If you compare to engineer Jump Shot(Rifle 5) this has range 700 at cd 20… then engineer would also need 1200 range there or even more(it takes some time after landing until you can move again and you need to compensate for this).

But not that they are changing ele I think they should just also change that warrior skill.

To be fair, Rush is affected by movement impairing effects. The class as a whole can’t remove movement impairing effects, it doesn’t have a blink, it can’t heal itself for 3/4 of their health pool without using their heal, and it doesn’t have access to protection.

This is why you can’t make a class by class comparison for individual skills.

Now that said, I do think the nerf is excessive. They should have just made it so RTL was affected by movement impairing effects, removed the heal from cleansing wave, and made frost breath’s heal dependent on actually doing damage.

The only thing they mentioned that seems extreme is the RTL change. With Swoop and Rush having the same overall value to their respective classes, it doesn’t seem justified to change it for the Ele. A better option would have been to just make it so movement impairing effects reduce the range of RTL much like how it does for Rush for Warriors.

This in conjunction with toning down the healing options (mistform change, they should remove the heal from cleansing wave, make it so frostbreath heals are dependent on doing damage) will reign in the class some. At least to the point where 30 points in arcane and water feel less obligatory.

The nerf is absurd. They should have just made RTL’s range reduced by movement impairing effects like many other movement skills in the game. The main issue with Ele’s has always been all their heals. They can heal for 3/4 their health without even using their heal skill. This in conjunction with the ability to retreat at will and re-engage is the problem.

If snares affected RTL like they do Rush, and the Ele’s access to heals wasn’t so numerous, the class wouldn’t need that much more work to get it in line.

I think the changes are good, but I haven’t been a thief for long. I do worry that the class has a hard time actually engaging an enemy as they’ll always see you coming and mug helped me with this problem. I wish things like shadowstep stealthed you or the class had a long duration stealth on a long cooldown.

Just because something is easy to avoid or counter doesn’t mean you make it obscenely powerful to compensate for it. Confusion needed the adjustment.