You’re assuming player skill with keep up with the difficulty. There will always be a portion of the player base at the lower levels.
If that were the intention, then they wouldn’t have added agony resistance.
If Agony is the only thing that gets harder then you’re right. If the difference between lvl 1 and lvl 15 is only agony then you have a legitimate point.
I’ve gotten to level 5, and I have not noticed any kind of difficulty increase. It could change as I go higher, but from what I seen I am led to believe the difficulty will solely come from Agony.
The people it will affect are the people who will also be doing it. Maybe the top 5 servers will care, but even then the impact will be small.
There are plenty of people on top servers that aren’t part of the main PVP guild(s).
But regardless, this still doesn’t change the fact that if you want to have the advantage, you have to grind fractals. We can harp on how small it is until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is people with ascended gear WILL have an advantage over people without it.
You’re assuming player skill with keep up with the difficulty. There will always be a portion of the player base at the lower levels.
If that were the intention, then they wouldn’t have added agony resistance.
Yes, because one person in your zerg is the reason you can’t take that keep. Without that +30 power the entire group will fail.
Lets not pretend like top-end PVP guilds won’t farm fractals and get everyone max gear because THAT’S WHAT THEY DO
Grats to them, they’ll get to fight the other top end pvp guilds eventually. This wont affect my rank 14 server in the slightest though.
Won’t affect you, therefore it won’t affect anyone else? Nice logic
So at lvl 10 I’ll be getting 14 greens instead of 14 blues?
Those are irrelevant.
The higher the level, the better the chance at ascended mats, and that’s what people want. It’s not rocket science that people are going to want to take the quickest path to the best loot because that’s how it is in every MMO. No level 10 is going to want to do a level 1 fractal, not without some kind of outside incentive (helping a guild member, getting paid, etc…)
Yes, because one person in your zerg is the reason you can’t take that keep. Without that +30 power the entire group will fail.
Lets not pretend like top-end PVP guilds won’t farm fractals and get everyone max gear because THAT’S WHAT THEY DO
I want to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want without feeling like I am missing out.
IE: I should be able to get the best gear from doing enough PVP, dynamic events, dungeons, or crafting. Not being pigeon-holed into one of those things.
Basically, I was fine with things up until this latest update. I don’t mind them adding a new tier of gear, but they needed to make it available from other facets other than the new gimmick mini-dungeons.
This game is just turning into another grind fest just like all the other mmos out today. If you want a really good game that is balanced and tons of fun try out swtor its fp2 as well and has alot better pvp system that is fun for all ages.
SWTOR is better than GW2? SWTOR???
I disagree with SWTOR having better PVP, but it certainly has better “progression” PVE. Which is why the patch is such a slap in the face, they are focusing and wasting effort on an aspect of the game that basically every other MMO out there does BETTER.
Lol, there aren’t even people in the new area anymore.
I hope for their sake everyone is doing fractals….
Nothing stops you from going back to the previous lvls.
Worse loot stops you from going back to previous levels.
Condition damage = PVP
Direct damage = PVE
This seems to be how the devs are intending it.
evade+stun+more dps > autoattack
Damage is fine, it can still melt mobs’ hp bars. Obviously it won’t kill anyone with 2 casts of PW, but the evade, the stun and the faster attack rate makes that skill better than your autoattack.
It isn’t all about raw numbers guys, there are more factors that make a skill powerful.
Without raw damage, most scenarios favor the use of Black Powder over Pistol Whip. In fact, this is one of the biggest issues with the kit currently: now that Pistol Whip is no longer considered a damage dump, it directly competes against Black Powder for a role in our arsenal. Most situations will favor Black Powder however, especially since it’s a combo field. PW doesn’t really have a well defined use anymore now that it no longer does relevant damage, outside of getting health back via signet (which is very niche).
Yup, and then everyone will finish gearing within 2 weeks and stop playing again.
All while droves of previously dedicated players exit.
Awesome strategy Anet.
My guess would be 3 months at the earliest. So yeah, either you grind fractals all day or enjoy being a second-class citizen (even though Arenanet said they were against that).
For WvW, they’ve already said that Ascended Gear will be available via WvW and other means as well, so, once again, just an extension of the gear progression that already exists from level 1-80 in the game.
Except we don’t know WHEN this will happen. Most likely it won’t be for another 3 months when the next big patch happens.
All we know is right now is that it’s only available in fractals, so anyone that doesn’t like grinding dungeons gets screwed. How is that fair?
Some kind of reforge thing like they have in WoW would be cool.
- No P/P buffs (the bodyshot thing is completely worthless)
- Flanking Strike still blows
- Pistol Whip still does about the same damage as auto-attack (which is crap)
Basically a ton of nerfs, a couple of buffs that really weren’t needed aside from maybe 1 or 2. P/P, S/D, and S/P still have massive, glaring issues that were overlooked
Overall, terrible patch considering we have been waiting THREE MONTHS for this.
(edited by Blacksarevok.8104)
They gap between Exotic and legendary was an effort gap.
Ascended gear was intended to fill that gap.
However, by adding better stats to ascended gear they successfully created ANOTHER gap to take the original gaps place.
GG Arenanet on becoming EA; fix one problem, create another even worse problem.
There wasn’t even an effort gap! They put Ascended items in for no reason except to cater to people who can’t live without higher numbers.
Fact is if you’ve been watching feedback here and on other gaming sites, there were a lot of people who felt like there’s not much to do in GW2, no endgame, boring after you hit 80, “i don’t want legendary and got full exotics right after I got 80, so I quit logging in” and over and over, the flames about no endgame.
So… here’s some endgame. With fractal, so no matter how you do it, it never ends. Smoke em if you got em, we’ll be here a while.
So the endgame went from being able to do essentially whatever you wanted (Dungeons, Events, PVP) to fractals (JUST fractals).
The gear ladder doesn’t anger me as much as limiting the new gear ONLY to fractals. A guy that spends as much time in PVP, or doing events, or even doing previous dungeons as a person doing fractals should be able to have access to that gear. As of now, if you want Ascended gear, you are pigeon-holed into fractals. That’s crap.
And yes, I know they said they would make the gear available from other facets of the game later on, but who knows when that will be. 3 months at the very earliest, so from now until then anyone that has no intention of farming fractals all day gets shafted.
The gap between Exotic and legendary was an effort gap.
Ascended gear was intended to fill that gap.
However, by adding better stats to ascended gear they successfully created ANOTHER gap to take the original gaps place.
GG Arenanet on becoming EA; fix one problem, create another even worse problem.
(edited by Blacksarevok.8104)
Legendary weapons won’t be updated to ascended stats until ascended weapons are added to the game in the far future.
(Edit follow up: Looks like they got updated early by accident, we’re going to fix this now they should be the same as exotic)
lol
They better not have nerfed Plinx. Half the people in the game will quit.
I feel like Arenanet is dangling above the pit TOR and countless other MMO’s fell into.
And that pit is: trying to cater to “MMO hoppers”. Instead of focusing on the people still playing the game without issue, they are focusing getting back the players that aren’t playing anymore. And it will most likely fail. There is a significant portion of players who get bored very quickly and just go from MMO to MMO to MMO. They are never satisfied, no matter what. Wasting effort on trying to tie them down when the effort is exactly that: a waste.
Do they really think that adding a gear ladder is going to bring back that many players that stopped playing? And even if it does, do they really think it’s going to tide them over another 3 months? Most of them will be done within weeks, if not days, and just stop playing again. They upset a huge portion of the dedicated playerbase in attempt to get the flaky/non-existent playerbase back. They are risking players they know would have kept playing the game on the chance they might get some of the hoppers to return.
This just doesn’t seem like a smart gamble to me, and for the most part, history will back up my feelings on the matter.
“Eventually”
Meaning not any time in the near future.
I have come to the conclusion that it does not matter who designs the game, never ever buy any game without checking the publisher. NCSOFT is junk. They make Korean grinders. How can they make an MMO without gear grind or allow it to continue without gear grind?
ITAM PLZ!
I heard the reason there are so many bugs in this game is because NCSOFT stock was tumbling and they wanted to get it out asap, even though it wasn’t ready.
Of course this is just what I heard.
More gear progression is the only way this game will last.
Yes I have a love/hate relationship with this game lol.
Thing is, they promised that this game was not going to have that. After the new tier of gear comes out and you “beat” that, then what? Another new tier? You might as well go back to WoW.. they have that perfected. Anet promised a different experience, too bad they are starting to listen to the WoW kiddies and going down this path… it will not end well.
I tried Wow and could not get past the horrible Fisher Price Graphics. Can I say it was a horrible game? No I can’t because their revenue supports the opposite. I have played multiple MMo’s since EQ1 in 1998 and have participated in 90% of every Beta for MMo’s since then. For people it is hard to go against their first true love =/
So graphics is the actualy point, and creepy treadmills aren’t anywhere near important? I’m playing a graphics, not a game? Well then, let’s uninstall.
Well let’s be real, WoW does look like garbage and it does turn off a lot of people because of that. And the devs keep putting appearance on the back burner, it’s a fair reason to not want to play the game over.
they made it clear dungeon running won’t be the only means of acquiring the gear and that they will be adding more ways to get it including WvW
They said “eventually”. Which could be months or years for all we know.
As for OP, I agree. I’m not a fan of the dungeons in this game, and making that the only way to currently get Ascended gear is crap.
It’s good for ranged single target. That’s about it. D/D will outperform on single target too, obviously, but P/P is nice for the situations where you wanna stay away (which is fairly often).
The damage output isn’t as dismal as people say. Vital Shot needs about a 30%-40% damage increase, which is substantial, but ideally you are trying to minimize VS usage and maximize Unload usage, so in it’s not that significant in the big picture. Unload needs maybe 5-10% increase, but it’s certainly viable for plinking away at range even as it is. In fact, I would go as far to say that P/P probably puts out competitive damage to most ranged specs as is (not all, obviously). The issue is that 99% of the time you will only be hitting Unload. Body Shot is useless in all situations, Head Shot is only useful in PVP, and Black Powder is pretty underwhelming because of how weak Vital Shot is.
But yeah, to summarize, P/P is certainly viable for ranged single target. Right now I’m actually using P/P + Sb for karma/boss farming, works fairly well. (Im also avoiding D/D because I know it’s gonna get nerfed again when the update hits, lol)
(edited by Blacksarevok.8104)
But, there’s no reason to think this is permanent, it’s just one of their usual mistakes. They make one every few years, and there’s nothing you can do about it but not give them money and hope they learn.
This, this, this, THIS.
When you are not satisfied with a game, don’t bother wasting your time complaining about it, it does NOTHING. You stop giving them money, period. I can’t emphasize on that enough.
“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”
-Mike Obrien, President of ArenanetFun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”
– Colin JohansonLies, lies and more lies.
“I’d like to respond to concerns players have raised about ascended items. Please keep in mind that we’re releasing this as one portion of a massive November update that introduces and improves many aspects of challenge, progression, and rewards. With this and upcoming updates, we view ourselves as introducing large amounts of content with supporting systems and features, akin to an expansion pack, building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.
Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.
Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.
Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores."Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director
Lying about lies, that must be a sad joke.
I’m disgusted.
Gottem
I do WvWvW
Only real problem I have is that there aren’t enough WP’s. I’m actually afraid to die because of the run back, to the point I might even avoid combat altogether in some situations.
It needs a cap, otherwise people would just stack bleed builds. If anything they should try to rework some abilities to do damage based on the bleed stack
Not a bad idea.
Or just give each player his or her own bleed stack.
The misconception is in interpreting what ‘gap’ actually means- its a gap in effort/time/finances, not strength.
I know, but people are justifying the stat gap that is being introduced using the current effort gap. One gap is being filled but simultaneously another one is being created. It make’s no sense.
Twilight
Weapon Power: 995 – 1100
+179 Power
+128 Toughness
+128 Vitality
Carrion Pearl Broadsword
Weapon Power: 995 – 1100
+179 Condition Damage
+128 Power
+128 Vitality
Stat allocation and damage ranges are exactly the same. Just wanted to bring this up because apparently a fair amount of people think there is a “gap” that needs to be filled between exotics and legendaries.
We only have evidence of a gear treadmill.
We don’t have evidence that said gear treadmill will be fueled by real money.
- Vital Shot base damage needs a buff (needs to at least be on par with Trick Shot. Yes, VS has a bleed but TS bounces to 3 targets so from a general stand point they both should have about the same damage, maybe have VS do slightly more).
- Body Shot needs to be reworked entirely. I suggest a cone AoE.
- Unload is pretty much fine. Maybe a small damage boost (5-10%), but I wouldn’t cry if they left it alone. Vital Shot is what really needs the buff.
- Head Shot just needs to do more damage.
- Black Powder is fine. It seems weak because Vital Shot is week. Buff VS, and Black Powder will also become more appealing.
Lol. Literally the only 2 reasons this game stands out from other MMO’s is that it’s f2p and has no gear grind. They are adding the gear grind already, so now we just wait for them add a sub and then it will be ToR 2.0.
Ascended gear aside though, it’s the profession/balance changes that are going to make or break this game for me next update. If I see a bunch of nerfs yet no buffs/fixes like I’ve seen the past 3 months, I’m done.
They said if they nerfed burst they would compensate the damage elsewhere. Debuffs don’t seem like an option, considering how useless they are in PVE, and Heartseeker is out of the question. So it will likely just be a buff to auto-attack, which is really pretty lame.
Unless they do something with Deathblossom. Maybe buff the base damage so that it becomes viable for a power/crit build? I dunno.
- PVE being primarily event farming, with a couple of dungeons tossed in every now and then.
I’ve been D/D + backstab in berserkers for a long while, switching between S/P and P/P sometimes. But I’ve been getting really, really, REALLY bored with having to use the same 2-3 weapon sets for months. I’ve been thinking about a P/D Sneak Attack build, which looks pretty fun, but I’ve heard very mixed reviews of condition damage builds in PVE, especially if you do a lot of dynamic events like the dragons and Orr temples (which I do). So I’m cautious to go and spend 20+ gold on condi gear only to find out it doesn’t perform well in PVE.
Anyone want to give out some opinions on the matter?
dont forget to add that 100b roots you in place and takes 3.5 seconds to animate and if someone actually takes that much damage they were basically standing there and letting the warrior hit them.
…but sure, lets compare that to an instant attack and act like we discovered something new and unique!
Pistol Whip has all of those cons, and has gotten nerfed to the point that it does like 1/3 the damage 100b.
Obviously this an entirely different argument, but it does articulate the point that 100b needs to be looked at.
you are also looking at things in a vacuum.
outside of 100b greatsword is a pretty awful weapon. the adrenaline attack is so awful most people just ignore it completely, and bladetrail and whirling attack are mediocre at best. rush is pretty good, but it has a 20 second cooldown.
i know the only reason i would ever use GS is 100b, and honestly i would rather use a different weapon because its really boring only having 1 good attack on your bar to use.
i couldnt really care less if they nerfed 100b.
also with the auto level feature in the game it doesnt really bother me that much that thieves are allowed to be in a different class than the rest of the game. i can make a new thief and join the bandwagon in minutes.
i just get tired of seeing ridiculous arguements from the thief community like the rest of the world are mouthbreathers.
i can teleport, stealth, have the highest burst damage, highest condition damage, and easiest way to escape battle when things are not going my way. my class embodies low risk and high reward.
but herr derr 100b is so much similar!! /drooling
People only went S/P because of PW. PW got nerfed.
If what you said is true, and people only go GS for 100b, then why hasn’t 100b been nerfed yet? I’m not trying to defend Backstab so much as I’m trying to figure out why Warriors are being left untouched.
I agree that Backstab needs to be looked at, but Thieves have already been nerfed numerous timeswhile simultaneously receiving no buffs to broken kits and abilities (P/P and Flanking Strike first come to mind, as well as Sword/Pistol in it’s current state). On top of the fact that, as I said before, Warriors are allowed to run around and do the same things S/P pre-nerf without a peep out of anyone.
Every patch Thieves get forced into playing a gimmick spec not because we want to, but because we have to.
dont forget to add that 100b roots you in place and takes 3.5 seconds to animate and if someone actually takes that much damage they were basically standing there and letting the warrior hit them.
…but sure, lets compare that to an instant attack and act like we discovered something new and unique!
Pistol Whip has all of those cons, and has gotten nerfed to the point that it does like 1/3 the damage 100b.
Obviously this an entirely different argument, but it does articulate the point that 100b needs to be looked at.
Because I like looking at my human female thief in t3 cultural.
But then again, I also like looking at my sylvari male warrior in that bare-chested plate armor.
Hmmm…..
100% agree OP
I’m crossing my fingers for P/P buffs, that was the main reason I made a Thief to begin with but it’s just so niche and setup so terribly that I can’t deal with playing, despite the fact it’s my favorite kit from a flavor standpoint.
The biggest issue I’ve had with this game so far is that the devs are so quick to (rightfully) nerf OP abilities/kits but so slow to buff UP abilities/kits.
One other thing on the topic of pistols….is there any reason, other than flavor, as to why most of the attacks are limited to 900 range? I mean, historically it makes sense for these types of pistols to have short range, but unless there is an actual balance reason for why they are limited to 900….why not make them 1200 like the other ranged weapons?
*Unload should stack bleeds for each shot. It would be a significant buff to Thief condition builds but not entirely overpowered because players have loads of condition removals.
No thank you. This would completely destroy my burst damage Unload build which is already weaker than many other builds.
How on earth would that destroy your burst damage unload thief? If anything wouldn’t it buff it? Considering it would stack a ton of bleeds as well as do a small burst of damage?
Unless they were short duration, high damage bleeds (4-5 seconds), then no, it would not buff burst. Having to wait 10+ seconds for your bleeds to finish ticking is not bursty at all.
Not to mention we already way too many condition based kits as it is. P/P does not need to be one as well. Especially since they haven’t said anything about removing the bleed cap yet.
Quickness is too powerful. Pistol Whip got scapegoated.
End of story.
My suggestions for Pistol/Pistol
1.) Vital Shot – Increase the damage. Make it apply vulnerability instead of a bleed.
2.) Body Shot – two ideas here:
a.)change it into a cripple to help address the kits mobility issues
b.)change it into a small scale AoE (maybe a shotgun blast type cone AoE)
3.)Unload – Once again, two suggestions:
a.)reduce the initiative cost to 4, and perhaps speed the animation up slightly (10%ish)
b.)Increase the damage (10-15% would probably cover it)
4.) Head Shot – two suggestions:
a.)reduce the initiative cost
b.) increase the damage substantially (300-400%)
5) Black Powder – This ability is fine. It’s only lackluster because Vital Shot is so weak for P/P. Buffing Vital Shot would in turn make Black Powder a more appealing ability.
Side note: Consider buffing the pistol ricochet trait. 5% is too low, 15%- 20 is more reasonable and would at least give P/P a small scale AoE
They should have reduced PW’s animation time go with the damage nerf. Basically, keep the initial pistol swing + daze, but cut down the sword slashes to just a single, hard-hitting swing. Make the evasion last the entire duration (instead of just partially).
Also, get rid of the root.
The only other worthwhile ability is Black Powder, and P/P + D/P both supply it as well. People go S/P for Pistol Whip, not for anything else. Now that they made it more-or-less do the same damage as the #1 attacks, there’s no reason to play it. That’s not the fault of the players, that’s the fault of the developers making “one trick pony” kits that rely on a single ability to make it viable.
I think it’d be pretty viable within a decent team, which is what I think Anet intended it for.
Figure a reliable way to geting into stealth and you can keep someone daze locked for 3 seconds in a sword build, which oddly enough is enough time to recloak and daze lock again.
All theorical of course, it just seems the general mindset atm is “I must kill things, NOW for the kitten!”
Well buddy, in PVE time is money, and killing things half as fast as you used to is costly.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that this nerf has FAR more impact in PVE than it does in PVP.
I feel like you are completely disregarding PVE here.
I love Pistol Whip in PVE. I use S/P when I’m running around alone fighting groups of mobs (that I can bunch together of course). I don’t feel that the 15% damage nerf has harmed my PVE effectiveness to any sort of significant degree.
You must lack playing time in cursed shore with S/P. Before the patch, it’s still quite ok to run along alone, facing 1 veteran or 2. But now? out of the window (as compared to greatsword, which can take up to like 3/4 vets)
And although, I sometimes run S/P. Even, then, I was like, “ahh, kitten, sword ONLY HAVE ONE ATTACK aside from auto-attack”. It’s probably my opening move, and that’s that. With pistol whip costing as high as 5intiviatives, and I don’t run the extra 3 initiative traits, I could hardly use it more than once. In a way, whether you like it or not, it is quite a major nerf for a weapon set, that truly can attack once (utility aside) and not to forget to account for other classes ability that can easily ‘interrupt/ break’ it….
Yeah now I guess I’m going to just spam black powder and autoattack things to death while i stand in the field.
It’s going to kill as fast as pistol whip does now and will be safer when it comes to defenses as well.
Pre nerf I’d use pistol whip to blow up 1-3 mobs in about 2-3 10k pistol whips, now I’m getting like 6k pistol whips (the 15% damage nerf is amplified in difference by crits when you have 250% crit damage it’s extremely noticable), I run out of initiative and am autoattacking anyway.
It was just a heavy handed nerf that just makes me kill things in double the time I used to.
Meanwhile warriors run around killing 1-3 mobs in 1 100 blades.
Izzy needs to find himself unemployed.
Yup, same boat here.
Sucks too because I was in the process of saving for my last few pieces of T3, now it looks like I’ll have to blow money on a new set of weapons. Thanks, Arenanet.