Guild Wars 2

Krysard.1364:

Dahkeus.8243:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

I think just an option as the simplified party UI, so you enable/disable tracking passive traits/procs, is enough

Yea, but if you do that, then you potentially have a lot of passive traits/procs that will show up which could cause a lot of clutter.

For example, let’s say you run a standard elixir variant soldier engi. You’ll have these ICDs to track:

- Evasive Powder Keg (10s)
– Aim-Assisted Rocket (10s)
– Hidden Flask (40s)
– Protection Injection (5s)
– Transmute (15s)
– Self-Regulating Defenses (60s)
– Stimulant Supplier (10s)
– Reactive Lenses (40s)
– Lock On (20s)
– Kinetic Charge (20s)

And that’s just from traits. Add runes/sigils and you have:

- Sigil of Intelligence (9s)
– Sigil of Energy (9s)
– Strength Runes might when struck (5s)

That’s a lot of crap to have on your UI when you may only really care about just Kinetic Charge or Self-Regulating Defenses…

Sorry, but this is a legitimate bug fix. It allows for counter play and rewards high skill players that can position their split wisely. I.e. you’ll drop your split when you’re on a ledge, then jump down before blowing cooldowns instead of just mindlessly dropping it anywhere.

Hmm…I’d be skeptical of seeing any AoE spells on phantasms, even though melee cleave on phantasm works. I think that if you ever had any phantasm that dropped a red circle on the ground, it would start to get really crowded/messy once you have a mesmer that can have 3 of these up at once dropping AoEs in addition to any red circles they drop themselves. It’d just get really messy for people playing against a mesmer like this.

However, if they gave phantasms a burst AoE similar to Mind Spike, which doesn’t cast a red circle, it may still work for ranged AoE without crowding the ground in red circles.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

Yea, the potential to be overwhelmed on your UI with every ICD makes this very problematic. However, I could see adding an option to track ICDs that you’re interested in. I.e. if you want to track that Sigil of Fire proc, you go to the settings and click on a tab with ICD tracking settings and click the checkbox for Sigil of Fire.

That being said, this would probably require a LOT of dev work for a relatively mild QoL payout to players and could make things really messy with balance/skill changes in the future. I mean, keeping up with tooltips is a beast in itself.

Yea, don’t use “introverts” for this discussion as it’s too broad to the point of irrelevancy. That’s like saying NBA players can’t win games, when what you really mean is that the Timberwolves can’t win games.

What you’re describing is a type of introvert that doesn’t like instanced content. There are tons of introverts out there (like myselves) that love instanced content and have no problem with MMOs because of the way MMOs limit socialization (i.e. you aren’t face to face and there’s always an off button).

No one can really say what the best class will be for HoT since we know so little about the raid content, but here are some classes that are probably your best bets:

Elementalist – Currently, they are probably the strongest class due to staff DPS. They also bring OP ice bows and have plenty of other utility to carry them if their DPS gets nerfed. Notable utility would be AoE blinds from glyph of storms, water fields from staff water attunement, projectile destruction from focus offhand, group condi cleanse, plentiful fire fields for might, and plentiful blast finishers.

Guardian – This class doesn’t always shine in pure speed runs, but is a staple of Fractals groups due to their large amount of utility, which will likely be as useful in raids. Utility includes group blocks from Aegis, some of the best projectile defense in the game, decent blinds from skills, group condi cleanse, best source of group stability, 100% uptime of protection for melee group with hammer autoattack, and group quickness from elite.

Mesmer – Brings a decent amount of utility along with Portals, which is unique to this class alone. Portals may make mesmers a staple of raids or may be completely useless. Notable utility includes great projectile defense (has more reflects than other classes, even if guardians can potentially block as much if not more), short range group condi clear, group quickness, AoE slow, group stealth, and will have Alacrity with chronomancer.

Engineer – Tends to have the most complex dps rotation in the game and while it’s not often the most ideal class, it has so much utility that it can work in just about any group in any content. Utility provided is pretty much everything listed above with the exception of quickness, slow, stability, and alacrity, but to a limited extent.

Warrior – This is often a staple of groups due to the large DPS boosting potential from banners/phalanx strength. It’s very possible that raids may want at least 2 warriors for every group simply because of how much phalanx strength warriors increase group DPS. Warriors don’t have a huge variety of utility, but the might and banners are so strong as they are that they don’t really need to do everything else.

Anyways, those are probably your safest bets, but it’s possible that Ranger or something like that becomes a must-have in HoT after some balance change or something. Also, I probably missed some utility for the classes listed, but I believe that’s the most relevant and prevalent utilities for those classes.

Here ya go. Swap runes for Strength and swap grenade kit for bomb kit or elixir B. Use other kits for stacking might, then sit on FT if that’s what you want.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Power_Grenadier

Yea…don’t expect to have content balanced to a 5 person guild. As important as you may think it is for this to happen, it’s just not feasible considering how much this will need to scale up.

I don’t know the link to the quote since it was a few months back, but I recall devs citing 15 people as the small size for guild content.

Nier.8741:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Why-Ranger-isn-t-getting-buffs/first

People rage at Rangers because Ranger isn’t even hard yet people fail so hard to play an easy class.

And then you get people saying “oh ranger so hard high skill cap” when in fact it is THE easy low skill cap class of the game because you just do the same Taunt combo over and over and it’s not even hard to land and then spam evades when you get focused.

The whole ranger community is annoying honestly, they can’t understand why their class can be stupidly easy. Like I wouldn’t even say my main can’t be easy, EVERY class in the game right now is stupidly easy but Ranger was ALWAYS easy since launch. Some classes that are easy right now were hard at one point.

This class will NEVER deserve respect in it’s current state, there is not a single top player that respects ranger because this class takes no skill. It never took skill whether it was viable or unviable.

What this class needs is a REWORK.

If you’re just going to describe every class as ‘easy’, then you may as well take any argument about difficulty out of your posts, because it has no meaning.

If you think everything is easy, then here’s your cookie for being Mr. Pro. In the meantime, please step aside so that people can discuss the relative complexity of classes in a way that’s meaningful and productive.

Glad to hear that they’re forging ahead with the Elite Spec releases…

ragnarokda.1805:

Traited healing spring with settlers is stronk in team fights.

Yea, it’s almost like you’re a Cele D/D ele for an instant every 24 seconds!

skullmount.1758:

https://twitter.com/DragonSeasonCom/status/643297849984294913

Dragon Season ?@DragonSeasonCom 9h9 hours ago

Dragon Season retweeted Bill Murphy

Bill Murphy of @MMORPGcom teased that we’ll have something new to talk about this week https://twitter.com/TheBillMurphy/status/641945366536036352 … ~Tilion

Dragon Season added,
Bill Murphy @TheBillMurphy
Well, my hype level for #GW2HOT just skyrocketed. Next week will be a good week.
4 retweets 6 favorites

We’re getting something at least this week. Hopefully its another elite spec, but at least we know somethings coming.

“…discerning followers will know why I’m excited”

Any ‘discerning followers’ here have any idea on this?

Yea, starting a new mesmer is really confusing. Here’s some tips on probably the strangest concepts while leveling a new mesmer:

Shattering
While leveling, you generally don’t need to shatter much and until you get the clone on dodge trait, it doesn’t do much aside from give a bit of extra damage on a mob that’s about to die. Mind Wrack is your go-to shatter and Distortion is a good ’Oh sh@#" button. The other two are pretty lackluster outside of PvP or tougher PvE content.

Clones vs Phantasms
You can generally distinguish these types of illusions by this when leveling: Clones are for shattering and phantasms are for sustained damage. Phantasms are really only worth shattering when they’re about to die on their own (mob about to die or the phantasms are about to get cleaved).

Generally, people tend to build for either a shatter-focused build, which has more burst and is more popular in PvP or a phantasm-focused build, which is higher sustained dps and more popular in PvE. However, while leveling up, you won’t get the same benefit from phantasms against low health mobs that die quickly, so feel free to experiment with both builds.

curtegg.5216:

Try using shatter when solo’ing vet karka and you will discover it doesn’t work well (I found you rely more on the phantasms to keep the karka busy while you pew-pew from afar, since karka have so many evades).

Yea, when you solo big bosses, of course it will suck.

But if you do the other 95% of open world content, you’ll either waste phantasm cooldowns on mobs that die in 2 seconds or you can shatter frequently to instant burst most enemies as well as deal more AoE damage for tagging mobs in big groups.

It kinda comes down to this:
More mobs, less mob health = shatter build benefits most
Less mobs, more mob health = phantasm build benefits most

Well, when you buy an entire game, but only play one small part of it, then you kinda put yourself in a place where you get bored/burnout of the content easily.

If you don’t enjoy any type of non-sPvP content at all, that’s fine, but I’d recommend balancing your gaming time with other games more so you don’t get so bored of GW2.

Oh, god no.

Do that and there will be no end to the people who constantly ping the map just to kitten people off. There are already people who do this and a sound would just make it worse.

The only compromise I’d make is allowing a sound, but setting it to off by default so that people who wanted it could turn it on.

Rangers not bad, but other professions can bring more to an organized team when played right. Here are a few comparisons:

Condi Ranger vs D/D Ele: Both classes can be strong on holding side points. However, D/D Ele has more mobility and a lot more utility to provide teammates in the form of healing and boons.

Longbow Ranger vs Mesmer/Thief: The problem with Longbow Rangers isn’t fighting off point. Longbow rangers can be awesome at team fights since they can provide so much sustained pressure without having to stop to use defensive skills due to being off point. However, once that fight ends, your enemy can easily out rotate you since Rangers don’t have the mobility to match what a Mesmer/Thief can do.

A lot of the problems with Ranger in sPvP are related to the nature of Conquest, but unfortunately, I don’t think they really shine in Stronghold either since there’s not much open area for longbow to shine and not enough stability/CC to do well with the channeling mechanics.

If we had a big, wide-open area type PvP with something like Capture the Flag, then longbow rangers would dominate the mid area and would play a crucial role…but in GW2 PvP maps, there’s not a lot of benefit to them unless you end up on Foefire.

For just PvE, I honestly think that shatter is great for open world, even if it’s inferior to phantasms in dungeon content.

Eh…I’d be ok if they never released another outfit ever again and instead concentrated on making armor sets.

Exedore.6320:

When you have to ban about half the builds in the game, that’s saying something…

Yea, it says something…

It says that this game isn’t balanced for 1 v 1.

I know you’re trying to insinuate that this is a sign that balance is terrible, but really, even if it was perfect, you wouldn’t want a game where all builds were equally viable in 1 v 1 unless the game was specifically for 1 v 1 since team tactics, role variety, and diversity in general are all important to a fun and diverse team-based PvP game.

But if you want a perfectly balanced 1 v 1 PvP game where skill is the only factor, feel free to go play a boardgame of checkers, lol.

monkeyakax.4701:

And what about warrior ? I see it is not present in the meta, but I really enjoy playing it !

Warrior doesn’t really have a good tanky build at the moment since shout war got nerfed kitten the 6/23 patch. GS/Hammer’s not a bad build, but it’s more of a damage-based build and got hit pretty hard when Rampage got nerfed.

P.s. if you want a good variety of strong necro builds along with a stream of pro gameplay, check out Noscoc’s twitch (http://www.twitch.tv/noscoc).

Huttunen.8309:

“Good variety of builds”
Only things I see are D/D eles, cele and MM necros, burn and bunker guards, pewpew or trap rangers, PU condi/power mesmers, D/P thieves who’s mist form triggers in two seconds, rampage warriors and soldier engis. 75% of the builds I see are something bunkerish with usually lots of condis or abusing burn

Also in 80% of games I play there’s always someone leaving, either before the start or one minute after. The state of this game mode doesn’t seem really great to me

Let me clarify the “Good variety of builds” statement. I mean this in relative to previous metas. There will always be “best” builds for each profession that overshadow the rest and that’s certainly been the case in the past.

There are some professions who have benefited more from the last big patch than others in terms of build variety. Guardians, for example, are big winners since they can go bunker, medi, or burn when in the past they were either bunker only or bunker and medi. Thieves, on the other hand, are in a worse spot since they’re basically stuck with D/P trickery as the only really good build (S/D got nerfed hard with the 6/23 patch).

So, I’d say it’s good, even if it’s not great.

Well, I can’t speak much to Necro, but I have seen videos of a mesmer soloing a lot of level 50 Fractals content. Link to these videos below:
https://www.youtube.com/user/sanderinoa/videos

Some of this stuff is based on not only how well a mesmer can solo a fight, but also on how they can get past certain mechanics with the use of teleports/portals. A good example of this is how a mesmer can solo the 3 whisps in Fractals when I’m pretty sure this is impossible for Necro.

Nope, but would be nice to see. I’d be particularly interested to see what they plan to do for Daredevil since the problems are primarily mechanic/animation based, which isn’t something that can be fixed by just adjusting damage numbers.

I would say that there’s a lot going well with PvP:
– There’s a good variety of viable builds
– Guardians can actually run condi and do well now
– Mesmers are no longer thief food
– The current most OP build (D/D ele) has a high skill cap (lots of cooldowns and hybrid role)

However, from a balance perspective, D/D eles are really way overtuned. The best example of this was the 4 ele, 1 thief team that won ESL not long ago. It’s generally really rare to see much class stacking in any tournament in this game, so having 4 of the same class actually doing this well is really worrisome. (Case in point: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_Overskill)

If you want to be something that can survive on a point by itself for an incredibly long time to keep it contested, go with necro.

If you want something that’s a strong bunker, but has more of a focus on team support and group fights, go with Guardian.

If you want something that is tanky, but can provide decent cleave damage, good CC, and some helpful utility, go with engi.

If you want to do all of the above at the same time, go D/D ele.

I thought I read somewhere that equipping a shield would increase aggro as well. Not sure how you play a guardian, but that could play a factor.

If you have high toughness, that will definitely do it, though. I frequently play with someone who runs Rabid gear on their Engi and they’re always a constant aggro magnet.

Tybalt >>>>>>>>>>all others

Honestly, if you didn’t mention those others in the context of Tybalt, I wouldn’t have known who you were talking about and I did the story on all 3 orders.

Trehearne does make sense though since he’s such a big character in the story. I’m sure there will be one for him eventually.

Zaron.1987:

if anet would communicate with us here and not only via other websites as also mentioned in other threads here, this overrun wouldnt be in this bad (behaviour) way.

just my 2 cents

thank you that is all

Maybe, but it doesn’t excuse people from acting like spoiled children just because they don’t get exactly the response they want, when they want it, in the place they want it.

Sadly, it reminds me of little kids that start screaming “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” at their mom who’s on the phone.

Yea, toxic chat in general is still a problem in GW2 and the only way it will get better is to get more dev enforcement. This is especially needed in HotM.

ANet love to cite this as a particularly friendly/helpful community, but I think that’s only really true when you come from the lower standards you get after playing many other MMOs. Sadly, there’s still too many people who just avoid MMOs altogether because people can’t act like respectful human beings to each other as soon as they start communicating over the internet.

Killface.1896:

Worst event ever there is no mob loot and if you get dc for 1sec you get no reward at all…

Anyone else read this in the voice of Comic Book Guys from the Simpsons? rofl.

The only advantage I’ve ever seen with names is when people who spam emotes in HotM have names with a bunch of weird characters and it’s a pain to report them since ANet still doesn’t have a right click select feature to report for names shown through emote. =(

(and yes, to the inevitable person who probably won’t read this anyways, I know you can hide emotes, but that’s not the point)

Justine.6351:

Why are so many people excited for gliding but so many are turned off by underwater?

-Both are 3rd spaces you can move in.
-Gliding is much more restrictive.
-Underwater has combat.

What specifically makes the gliding experience better then underwater? And no “getting to places you cant get to by walking or swimming” because that is simply by design.

Would Underwater experience have been more embraced if maps were created with more depth physically and conceptually?

I don’t spend a lot of time underwater, but I would if there was a good reason to. Perhaps I just answered my own question. So I ask this now, why are they not fixing underwater experience before moving onto above ground experience? Fall damage is more fun?

edit:
ha, fall dmg is more fun? gliding timer is more fun?
if they had added breath timer and dmg for exceeding breath timer then perhaps underwater would have been more exhilarating ! Toss in runes of breath and swimming mastery and we would be gold !

Easy. Because you don’t have to run around trying to find the elusive hit box to land attacks when gliding.

The frustrating part of underwater combat has nothing to do with underwater movement and everything to do with the actual combat.

This is absolutely amazing. Best community contribution I’ve seen in a long, long time. Thank you for this!

Yup, sounds like the current meta build. Here’s a link to the build guide on MetaBattle and a link to a video guide as well:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_S/S_/F_/P

D/D ele, but Mesmer up there as well.

Amante.8109:

Dahkeus.8243:

Well, you could learn to rotate to +1 fights instead of trying to play PvP like it’s some wild west shootout. =P

I mean, learning how to rotate to give fights the +1 advantage at the right time is what give thieves the advantage. They can +1 fights at the right time more than any other class.

Mesmers have a lot of mobility, but their personal mobility doesn’t match their team mobility (portal). So, they can give a port to win a clutch point very often, but they can’t rotate between points by themselves as much since their Z-axis ports are on cooldowns.

And honestly…people here love to talk up a lot of hypotheticals, but the proof is in the pudding. Ask Abjured what the state of thief is. They seem to be doing pretty well winning WTS with a thief, lol.

Yes, Thief is really effective in that one role (mobile decapper and opportunist +1’er). And yet, as always, the assumption is that if someone is complaining about Thief, they must be bad at that role, and/or want Thief to be overpowered in 1v1 combat.

It’s nice that Thieves have a near-guaranteed spot in high level SPvP teams, it really is, but it’s through one narrowly defined build/playstyle that a lot of people simply don’t find enjoyable. It’s also worth considering that not everyone is a high level Thief playing in premade tournaments. Some of us just want to be able to enjoy our profession in solo queue SPvP, which seems like a fair thing to ask.

Not sure if you’ve missed many of the posts here, but there are people saying that thieves aren’t good in PvP and think that they can’t even fill this role and/or that this role doesn’t help a team win games.

As for solo q, you can play this role just as well and finding undefended points is even easier.

If you’re saying that you just don’t like playing the mobile decap/+1 role that thief works with…well there’s plenty of other professions that do the other more generic roles. Sure, some additional roles would be nice, but that doesn’t mean that the thief is in a bad spot in its’ current state.

Maris.3164:

Poxxia.1547:

Cynz.9437:

Necros are waaaayyyyy better team fighters than thieves ever will be. Necros can stay in big scale fights, thieves will never be able to nor they ask for it.

Once again no thief is asking to be able to 1v1 every single class in game but at least have fair chance vs some of them. Also, once again WHERE DO MESMERS FIT IN THIS WHOLE ARGUMENT OF YOURS because they can fill exactly same role, have actually more stealth than thieves, more CC, higher burst and better survival.

I have yet to see a single post in any thread that managed explain why it is ok for mesmers to be how they are but not for thieves.

Mesmers don’t “fit in my argument” – I was under the impression we were talking about thieves. Attacking my argument by drawing in mesmers is a straw man.
My point is exactly the opposite: You can’t compare classes like that (or at least imo you shouldn’t be able to).
I think you should be a bit more specific about what you want to be able to do … in one build. And what you want to be able to do “in general”.

Actually we should be dragging mesmers into this. Mesmers and thieves used to share a role of decapping and 1v1. Now only mesmer is capable of 1v1, whereas thief doesn’t survive long enough to kill anyone 1v1 (except other thieves). Mesmer and thief are a natural comparison, one was buffed, the other was not.

And as others have said a thousand times… We only want to be able to win 1v1 at least sometimes, not just against other thieves. Or is thief supposed to only decap empty points? What is your justification for that?

Well, you could learn to rotate to +1 fights instead of trying to play PvP like it’s some wild west shootout. =P

I mean, learning how to rotate to give fights the +1 advantage at the right time is what give thieves the advantage. They can +1 fights at the right time more than any other class.

Mesmers have a lot of mobility, but their personal mobility doesn’t match their team mobility (portal). So, they can give a port to win a clutch point very often, but they can’t rotate between points by themselves as much since their Z-axis ports are on cooldowns.

And honestly…people here love to talk up a lot of hypotheticals, but the proof is in the pudding. Ask Abjured what the state of thief is. They seem to be doing pretty well winning WTS with a thief, lol.

Hmm…well, I was looking forward to Daredevil, but unless they make any really significant changes to the mechanics/animations/cast times, I may end up still playing D/P.

Engineer is the big question mark for me right now since Engi and Thief are my main interests at the moment. I may mess around with the other specializations, but it’s hard to see me seriously playing any of them yet.

Condi engineer is only higher Dps on long fights and they don’t have any burst. Burst =\= DPS.

And arguing numbers right now before HoT releases is a pretty ridiculous waste of time.

MarauderShields.6830:

Dahkeus.8243:

Thief is amazing in conquest, but only if you play to its strengths, which is generally very different from other classes. Thieves excel at decapping undefended points with their unparalleled mobility and +1ing even fights to quickly turn the tide.

If you try to 1 v 1 or just jump in team fights from the start, you’ll find PvP to be an uphill battle and it will likely be very frustrating.

“This half-dead octogenarian is amazing at professional football, guys! It’s just that you have to play to his strengths, like getting water bottles for the active teamplayers, collect dirty towels after the rest of the team showers etc. instead of actually letting him play the game. And every team has someone who does this kind of stuff, therefore, he must be the best player on the team!”

Very creative analogy….but doesn’t fit at all.

It’s more like:
Poor Wayne Gretzky. He’s such a small little hockey player. He can’t check or hit nearly as well as anyone else and really shouldn’t engage in any fights. He can only skate fast and shoot well. How will he ever be good in hockey?!?

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Dahkeus.8243:

Thieves excel at decapping undefended points with their unparalleled mobility and +1ing even fights to quickly turn the tide.

I laughed.

You should get a job in advertising. You’re good at making general mediocrity seem like a strength.

Are you new to PvP? Cuz what I described is pretty much what a thief did to get voted MVP for Abjured in their WTS victory. Thief’s mobility and burst is far from mediocrity.

DingoVad.1945:

How do you guys think thiefs (And Daredevil) will do in raids? As i see it, so many other classes has the same damage, with better support and better defence? The only pro to thief would be more dodging, and stealth, but how often would stealth be needed in a single encounter? I love thief, but i will be focusing my time on raids, and thief seems underpowered here :/

Thieves have more than just stealth and if they design encounters well, we’ll be using all our tools frequently.

1) Blinds. Spammable and perfect for making trash mobs manageable.
2) Stealth rez. This will probably be very useful, particularly if content is made as hard as they say.
3) Mobility. Need to move this object from this place and put it in that thing? Thieves can do that faster than anyone else.
4) Burst. Yea, we’re top DPS now, but not one can say how the classes will compare after all the beta testing and class balance. However, we still do awesome burst, which is pretty fundamental to our class. This is why a thief is great for taking out the gate in CoF P1.
5) CC. Defiance bar? Pop basi venom and start spamming headshot or pistol whip.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

roamzero.9486:

D/D Ele OP, Mesmer kind of OP. A single Thief still mandatory on competitive teams. The rest of the classes kind of blend together in terms of balance. Also, burning stacks in intensity and is particularly strong.

Except Ranger.

Poor Ranger.

Longbow ranger’s not in a terrible spot for most PvP brackets, particularly since it now has taunt on pet.

Just don’t expect to win top tier tournaments with it. =P

Here’s some feedback on the staff animations:

This is from playing a male human.

Skill 1: Part 1 and 2 of the autoattack look great (best staff animations on the weapon set), but the third attack looks like you’re using telekenesis to twirl the staff. Please change part 3 of this animation.

Skill 2: Fine. Not very staff like, but it works.

Skill 3: This one is good. No changes recommended.

Skill 4: The big golf swing animation doesn’t make sense and I really don’t think this skill needs a big cast time anyways. I suggest a quick flick of the bottom of the staff against the ground instead. The animation for this was blatantly copied from the guardian Banish skill on hammer and it just doesn’t work. =(

Skill 5: The animation is ok, but the long cast makes it look strange. A reduction on cast time would greatly help this.

Thief is amazing in conquest, but only if you play to its strengths, which is generally very different from other classes. Thieves excel at decapping undefended points with their unparalleled mobility and +1ing even fights to quickly turn the tide.

If you try to 1 v 1 or just jump in team fights from the start, you’ll find PvP to be an uphill battle and it will likely be very frustrating.

If you use S/D with acro and DD, it works pretty well. Not sure it’ll overtake D/P for conquest though.

DeceiverX.8361:

No access to Fury and initiative restoration puts too much emphasis on Trickery, still. Not much really changes the way this profession is played in this spec, seeing as there are a lot of other equally-evasive ones that can offer still-better damage or sustain.

Really good point here. The spec needs to do some of what trickery does to feel less like a loss of a trait tree to get a new weapon or new utility skills.

If this went live today, I think D/D would still be king in PvE and D/P trickery would still rule PvP with DD just being a novel distraction to play with if you’re working on map complete.

I think a lot of problems with staff will make more sense if you compare it to the way S/D works. S/D has almost no cast times on most skills and there’s no awkward pre or post casts.

Staff seems to try and mix the evasion of S/D with the big hits of dagger and uses cast times to balance this merging of strengths. However the lack of stealth and weaker mobility already balance it out. Meanwhile, the cast times take away the “thief” feel of the profession.

Hmm, very much disagree. I was super hyped…until I actually played it. There are too many strange after casts or just long cast times on everything. Maybe this is ok in PvE, but in PvP, it’s terrible. S/D daredevil is the only thing I’ve been able to make work.