Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

To be clear, this is not impacting the utility skill, just the sword #2 toggle. The reason is because of risk vs reward. This is a very rewarding skill with currently little risk associated.

Phew made it to page 26. I’ll be at work in about 20 minutes at whih point I’ll address some of the bigger Ranger, Thief, and Warrior discussions.

So we got a (lame) response to IS, now we just wait to see if they’ve considered ANY of our concerns in the wall-of-text post.

I agree, but like it or not, Arenanet are pushing it on us. Might as well try.

Seeing as we’re being pressured in to using this trait for our mobility, I thought I would suggest a way of putting this trait on a “not garbage” level.

1) It actually breaks the stun you’re teleporting away from
2) Does not trigger if you have Stability (like it does now)
3) Reduce cooldown to 15 or 20 seconds, so it will actually proc more than once during a fight and be semi-useful for sustained encounters
4) Grant Vigor instead of Swiftness (5-10 seconds depending on the cooldown reduction), to promote staying in the fight after the disable has occurred
5) Possibly extend the range of the teleport to 900, but since the disable would actually be broken, might not be necessary

Thoughts?

Impact.2780:

Auesis.7301:

Phenn.5167:

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Hah. Haha. No.

You can get about 1/3 uptime, 5s with 15 DA, 15s cooldown per target.

On another note, are we going to get a wall-of-text response for Thief any time soon, or are we just going to be left with Tyler’s “MASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIVE buff” post, basically ignoring all of our concerns?

No, he’s right. Shortbow 4 is a poison field lasting 4 seconds, and shortbow 2 is a blast finisher. A blast finisher in a poison field is AoE weakness for 5 seconds.

Right, but that’s not indefinitely. You’ll run out of initiative within 2 fields + 4 blasts and will have served no other purpose other than putting down the poison and weakness which will be removed fairly soon after, especially after Opportunist gets nerfed to complete uselessness. Someone doing that with Shortbow instead of just hitting hard with continuous CBs or simply running melee is a waste of a tourney spot.

Phenn.5167:

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Hah. Haha. No.

You can get about 1/3 uptime, 5s with 15 DA, 15s cooldown per target.

On another note, are we going to get a wall-of-text response for Thief any time soon, or are we just going to be left with Tyler’s “MASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIVE buff” post, basically ignoring all of our concerns?

Guardians, Mesmers and Eles still being able to access permaVigor for very little investment, and Thief barely getting half uptime when blowing 30 trait points in to 2 lines, is what blows my mind.

Sure, the buff is so massive that we have…pretty much the same ini regen as before, if not worse.

Did you think Opportunist was a throwaway trait or something?

Neoheart.2750:

Everyone else’s vigor is to see the hammer too so I guess they want less dodging.

Actually no. Critical Infusion and the other “5s Vigor on crit, 5s cooldown” traits ARE NOT EVEN MENTIONED. So Mesmer, Guardian and Ele are still capable of permanent Vigor, with 5 trait points not including Renewing Stamina.

Makes sense, right? /s

What Hawken said. I’d go so far as to say Thief is incredibly potent in PvE, contrary to the whiny babies who don’t know encounters and then blame the game for their shortcomings. Thief is very punishing for error, but rewarding when encounters are played correctly.

Running full Berserker with Scholar runes, 25/30/0/0/15, sometimes 10/30/0/0/30 if boons are lacking in the composition, and carrying all weapons for any situation, mostly S/P. I have a PTV set that I swap in and out of depending on reliability of damage evasion and volume/strength of hits eg. Underground Fractal at the trash runs (blind immunity and HUGE amount of incoming hits that some are eventually going to get through), back to Berserker at the bosses.

Now I just need the class to be renamed Assassin and I can be the staple.

Wut? D/D is untouched.

Bye, I guess.

Also, there’s another extremely confusing factor here.

Vigor Uptime and Inconsistency

You say you hate classes having access to permanent Vigor, and you’ve decided to go and nerf Engineer and Thief uptime by a substantial amount. Less painful for Engineers, almost flat-out killing Thief completely. But then, these traits still exist:

Critical Infusion: Gain vigor when delivering a critical hit. (5s) 5s cooldown.
Vigorous Precision: Gain vigor when delivering a critical hit. (5s) 5s cooldown.
Renewing Stamina: Gain vigor when you deliver a critical hit. (5s) 5s cooldown.

The elementalist one I can understand (as it’s a Major), but the other two? Cracking down on Vigor uptime and you’re allowing a heavy armor class with tons of defenses and an incredibly versatile class with stealths, invulnerabilities and many other defensive niches maintain permanent Vigor in a power-based build? AS MINOR TRAITS?! Why? If you had any sense of consistency, the first two should at least have 10s cooldowns.

Getsuga.3697:

Paulo.8459:

- but simultaneously nerfing endurance gain through halving vigor uptime is very, very bad. Normally a thief doesn’t take vigorous recovery and bountiful theft at the same time. After the change the thief would be able to dodge less than most other classes with acces to permanent vigor uptime, although the thief is considered to be the most evasive class in the game.

My proposal: either nerf shadow return or vigor uptime, but not both. “Shaving” means to tone down something step by step. Halving vigor uptime seems a bit drastic to me, especially along with the other changes wich affect the sword thief.

This suggestion, if overlooked, will largely make any play style of thieves laughable. Decide on which one you’ll nerf, giving shadow return a casting time or vigor up time. Nerfing both will destroy thieves everywhere.

Pretty much this. What you are doing is NOT shaving.

I don’t understand where you’re going with Thieves. You say builds designed for being slippery/evading a lot are too strong, but where does that leave us? Design philosophy has stated MULTIPLE times in the past that Thief was SUPPOSED to be slippery, SUPPOSED to be mobile, SUPPOSED to be hard to catch. Now, you’re saying they can’t have that? What are we left with? Pigeon-holed back in to D/P that barely functions in this meta, or Cluster Bomb spamming because meleeing is pointless?

- It’s nice to see that Pistol Whip is getting some love, but it’s still going to collapse dead as soon as it comes across any Retaliation (which is EVERYWHERE), and the stun needs to function at 1 second again to allow any damage to land at all. This skill still needs love.
- Boosting base Initiative regeneration is a step in the right direction, but why keep a bunch of traits like Opportunist and make them awful now?
- Removing ICD on Sundering Strikes is nice.
- Infusion of Shadow change was necessary.
- Adding a cast time to Infiltrator’s Return is a complete disaster. You would totally eviscerate ALL Sword builds for PvP and WvW. The loss of mobility from the instant cast of this skill means that a MASSIVE amount of mobility for S/x is gone.
- All the changes to Vigor are CRIPPLING. You say you don’t like classes having access to large amounts of Vigor, but Thieves have an entire trait line that operates around the concept of evasion! Vigor and evasions are our lifeline at this point, because stealth in sPvP is in a dreadful state (speccing for it will violently destroy any of your DPS and make you dead weight when trying to contest points). You must NOT change Vigor in this way.
- Changing Assassin’s Reward to Grandmaster guarantees that nobody will ever use it. – - Quick Pockets and Assassin’s Reward were pretty much destined to work together if you weren’t using Quick Recovery, and now that’s out. Slightly increasing the healing will not have anywhere near enough of an impact on survival.
- Hard to Catch is still an absolutely terrible trait and you need to rework it completely before trying to coax us in to using it. You have no control over where you end up, the cooldown is long and you don’t even lose the disabling effect.

I just want to ask, what builds do you see as being viable in sPvP now that you intend of crippling most mobility, which is all Thief ever had going for it there?

Is it possible you are putting down a Refuge while you have already fired an autoattack, so the bullet is still mid-flight when you stealth, immediately Revealing you and carrying on your auto? This sometimes happens with me when I use Shortbow.

There is no need to understand how it works. You just need to know never to use it.

wish.1027:

If youre attacking people with a shortbow, youre playing thief terribly wrong.

I’m not too sure about that, I can think of one (but only one) situation that SB is desirable above any other weapon set – Grawl Shaman at high levels. Unparalleled AoE capabilities against the army of lava elementals, tons of blasts for water fields and unlimited evasion for kiting if someone else goes down or needs help (I always get permanent aggro in full zerk w/ Scholar from this nutcase, so it helps).

Sure, you can swap to it for the blast/kiting + shield phases and melee when he’s alone and nobody is in trouble (usually use D/D for that), but honestly I get lazy in that fractal.

Thief: Longbow or Rifle (we don’t have 1200 range, so, yeah.) and OH Sword.

Thief: Change one trait:

Residual Venoms: Restore one charge of your venoms on a critical hit. (5 second ICD).

(Available charges will tally across the top of each venom’s utility icon, above the cooldown timer. You can then pre-maturely activate them before the full venom utility returns).

Maybe a Venom build might actually be useful then.

Clumsy is right. Both of those runs are basically first attempts – I was not sure if blind would be able to properly combat multi-hit attacks etc. For the majority, I ran Berserker accessories, Soldier armor with Divinity runes. On repeat attempts, I’d go with Berserker armor + Scholar. My traits were also heavily invested in maintaining initiative and being very multi-purpose eg. 0/30/10/20/10 for various major traits in all those trees that would benefit me when on my own.

In groups, you want to be running 25/30/x/x/x with as much Berserker as you feel confident with, gradually getting glassier and glassier as you learn encounters. Ruby Orbs work fine, but eventually Scholar will be useful. I believe 25/30/10/0/5 is most beneficial for x/D-heavy builds for the initiative sustain with stealth.

And yes, carry every weapon (Sword, 2 daggers, 2 pistols, shortbow). Every combination will have a use, somewhere.

Just 2 examples. In a PvE metagame where not getting hit is better than sponging hits, Thief is actually fantastic. We have a ton of blinds, evasive skills and mobility to slip out of hectic situations eg. some Fractals where the group cannot stack for some reason. While doing all of this, we can afford to invest in to offensive gear more than any other class, simply because our lifelines are evasions in the first place, so it matters none. Sure, the learning curve is a little sharper than Warrior, but you can put down incredibly formidable DPS, evade most, if not all incoming damage, and you can support in ways that don’t involve heals/boons eg. stealth ressing, a LOT of blast finishers (which can heal in water fields etc), Smoke Screen. Also, Signet of Malice is the best healing skill in the entire game for PvE – absolutely NO exceptions.

I adore my Thief in dungeons – I run her in level 48 Fractals every day with zero problems. Generally, underperformance on Thief unfortunately comes from the player, not the class.

Standing around in maps, talking to people with the chat window, using skills on thin air, dodging around etc. works perfectly fine. As soon as someone near me hits a mob, entire game slows to a crawl and then halts entirely.

This only happens around 22:00 GMT+1, for an hour or two before or after that time. Nothing unusual happening in my connection history, and ISP reports no problems.

So, about that “collaborative development” thing. Since pretty much NOTHING changed from the initial preview, are we to assume that this collaboration movement doesn’t apply to game balance?

I have no words…

darkace.8925:

With the small size of this balance/skill update I’m just going to assume they’ve got like two guys working on skill and trait balance.

Assume? They have. They literally have 2 guys working on balance.

Chat is fine. Running around in the open world is fine.

As soon as I approach combat, even against a single mob, the game slows down to a total halt and I am unable to use any skills or interact with anything, or use any items.

Yet, I can still talk on chat with ZERO latency.

Server: Gandara

I’ve tried this 8 times now, same problem. Jumped at it a little before, after and as the staircase lined up. Gone THROUGH the texture of the clock (while the glass is broken, obviously). Nothing.

ensoriki.5789:

Two threads?
Might as well repost that S/P has been murdered and is now worse than P/P has ever been. R.I.P Pistol whip, good night sweet prince, you tried so hard.

How so? What happened to PW? What did I miss?

I was actually excited. The dev livestream hinted nothing at the nerfs, so I actually got a little giddy that perhaps they had decided against it and actually helped the class out.

Oh, how naive I was.

My Warrior gets stuck in limbo on loading screens >50% of the time. Every other character works perfectly fine. What could be causing this?

I think I made them look good

http://imgur.com/a/GidVN#0

Here’s ones I came up with a while back.

4) – Riposte (4 initiative)
Block the next attack and retaliate with a weighty slash, weakening foes in front of you. Regain initiative if not attacked.
Damage: ~600
Weakness: 6s
Range: 150

5) – Javelin (3 initiative)
Hurl your sword to the target location with increasing velocity, crippling foes it passes through before it hits the destination. Deals more damage to targets further along the trajectory. Cripples for longer further along the trajectory.

Damage < 300: 400
Damage 300-600: 450
Damage 600-900: 500
Damage > 900: 550
Cripple < 300: 3s
Cripple 300-900: 5s
Cripple > 900: 7s
Combo Finisher: Projectile
Range: 1,200

-> Flashing Blades (3 initiative)
Shadowstep to the thrown sword, blinding foes at the origin and destination.
Blind: 5s
Radius: 120
Range: 1,200
Breaks stun

Sword MH:
Eagle Eye (5 initiative)
Twirl and evade, attacking in rapid succession at foes around you while reflecting projectiles.
Damage (4x): 900
Combo Finisher: Whirl
Evade: 1/2s
Range: 130

Dagger MH:
Float (2 initiative)
Bounce back, evading attacks.
Evade: 1/2s
Combo Finisher: Leap

-> Sting (3 initiative)
Pounce forward, dealing heavy damage with both weapons at once to adjacent foes to your target. Each hit returns some endurance.
Damage (2x): 800
Endurance gain (2x): 10
Combo Finisher: Leap
Range: 450

Pistol MH:
Explosive Powder (4 initiative)
Leap backwards and fire a large cone of explosive shot over your prepped sword that burns foes in front of you. Parry incoming attacks.
Damage: 250
Burning: 3s
Block: 1/2s
Range: 450

shrug I like my attempts at fixing it.

Meh, I kinda like how you can make them look with certain dye setups. The helms and most shoulders ARE hideous, though.

I came to this forum specifically to find a thread like this, so I could have a laugh.

A modicum of co-operation and it’s a cakewalk. Really, how low do you have to sink before content is acceptable? When the boss just drops dead in front of you and a big banner flies overhead with confetti saying “EVERYONE’S A WINNER!”

Sil.4560:

Excalibur.9748:

Your zerg of 10-26 needs a thief like me to deal with them. My thief is specifically built to catch a warrior.

Thank you for admitting that there is a class with more absurd mobility than deserves to be in this game, and that you can, on demand, catch a fleeing warrior. I never want to see your whiny garbage on how warrior is OP again.

I guarantee I know exactly what is used to catch the Warrior. Infiltrator’s Signet, Shadowstep and Steal, possibly traited for 1500 range. 2 of those need a hostile target, and Steal must be in range for the teleport to activate. Unless you think repeatedly teleporting in to the people attacking you is mobility…

Corrsk.7618:

When Thieves will be “redesigned”, if i won’t be able to go 1 v 4 and manage to kill one guy every now and then without taking the slightest risk of being downed, then yes, i see it as a Nerf. Because that’s what Nerf mean.

Haha. Ha.

…

Wait, you’re serious?

Please, go record that. I’d love to see it, because this paragraph threw ANY credibility you had right out the window. This must be a joke. It must be.

Kristen Silverblood – defensive and offensive sets.

I will be okay with it if the cost is reduced back down to 1.

Larcenous Strike will steal 1 boon instead of 2.

Don’t know about other nerfs.

Totally unplayable. Only GW2 is suffering – everything else is fine. Even the in-game chat is fine. However, I can’t move or do any action for 10 minutes until an eventual DC.

Server: Gandara

Daecollo.9578:

This post will slowly be ignored, because you have no idea or any concept of class balance.

Ha. Aha. Ahahah. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Kyrie now has a PTV set for Tequatl. Ready to rumble

It’s so viable that it’s practically a meta class alongside WGM, under one condition and one condition only: you know how to play it properly. It’s far less forgiving than either heavy class.

My advice is to get a good feel for the class and how it plays before taking it to dungeons. The extra time will be worth it.

I’m currently running the show over at Eden, and on the first day of the Tequatl revamp, I attempted to organise things with the other commanders in my guild. We had a good idea of what tactics to use, but there’s a slight problem that holds us back.

We have no army.

We’re a relatively small guild. We have commander tags, common sense and a cozy little Mumble channel for ourselves should we feel the need to use it, but we have pretty much no man-power in comparison to what’s needed for this. After the first day, I went with [TKS] to see how they handle things. Now I’m back on Gandara and want to put some of the strategy I’ve picked up on my home server. However, I don’t know what other guilds have been doing this, or if there is in fact a proper effort going on right now that I’m not aware of!

In any case, if any guilds on Gandara are interested in banding up against the beast, give me a shout in-game on Auesis.7301 or message me on here. If anyone has any information or pointers to an existing campaign that Eden can assist with, also whisper/message me.

Thanks, and good luck on your respective servers!

I hope you don’t mean anyone from Eden. We were running the show for most of the first night on Gandara, and I know nobody among us who would ever be arrogant/elitist/bitter.

If an Edenite is responsible this time, let me know so I can get rid of them.

Do the turrets still work when the cannon has fired? That quickness would be a huge difference.

It’s clearly not gone. You obviously used the Splitter and got it back right after. I know you did, because I tried this with Quip, and it works the same way.

Nice try. Love the blatant lie about it being gone “forever”.

Well, that gif is horribly broken.

Take this instead.

The chair describes my reaction when people say the whining will never stop.

Wait, no pugs allowed for FotM?

Who the hell have I been smoothly running 48s with for the past few months then, because I’m pretty sure I don’t know the entire dungeoneering population of GW2? Also a legendary owner, so…yeah.