Well, high dps is almost exclusive to melee dps in GW2. The highest dps you have 2 options. The first is an engineer using a grenade kit. The second is a staff ele focusing on fire spells.
Currently, the warrior is one of the most accepted high dps classes since their high dps builds are so versatile to group compositions and boss fights. However, there are other classes that can do equal or greater dps with builds that are less popular/understood. Examples of this are eles that build around using a conjured lightning hammer build and rangers that use a sword/warhorn build.
If you’re unsure, roll a class, get it past the intro part (to about lvl 2), then enter the Mists (the PvP test area). In that area, you’ll have all of the skills and abilities unlocked and can test out stuff on either stationary dummies or test enemies that fight back.
I’ll be surprised if they never release RNG boxes again, but really I think the problem with them is that people actually buy them and not that they exist.
I think the problem a lot of people have with heartseeking thieves is that they wait until they are at low health to start spamming their defensive abilities, then they get stuck playing defensively until they die.
Heartseeker is weak when you have a lot of health, so pop cooldowns early on to prevent getting low. If a thief uses heartseeker on you when you’re at high health, unload on them with offensive skills. Your damage will outpace theirs if they start heartseeking too early.
It’s very possible to counter thieves, but they will seem very intimidating when you first start playing against them. I promise you that fighting thieves will get much, much easier the more you PvP and the more you learn about them. Don’t give up on sPvP just because of this.
Also, remember: The harder a thief hits, the squishier it is.
Warg.
If you haven’t run into one in game, go to this link and take a look.
These guys look awesome. Personally, I’d be fine if they just re-skinned wolves to look like this.
I just wanted to chime in briefly to say to ArenaNet: This whole open communication direction thing you’re taking with the Dec 10th patch…it’s a beautiful thing.
As a long time MMO player, I’ve seen devs take several different tactics to talking with the community. Sadly, a lot of devs end up being very tight lipped about everything after seeing how up-in-arms a community can get with bad news. Developing and maintaining a game isn’t an easy thing to do and making what often looks like a simple change can often turn out to be a tremendous undertaking or can cause an immeasurable wave of unintended consequences. This makes it dangerous for devs to say something as simple as “We will make X change and it will be released on Y date”.
I know Jon Peters caught the sharp end of the community for talking about some ranger changes that were supposed to come out in a November 2012 patch. When the patch came and went without the type of ranger changes he mentioned, the started flowing with raging posts and honestly I think the devs (understandably) got a lot quieter about future releases after that.
However, the way the Dec 10th patch has been handled has been nothing short of truly awesome. I know it’s taken a ton of work for ANet to read the mountain of posts and to deal with unappreciative little snots that decide to say “WTF ANET U SO DUMB FOR DOING X” instead of saying “Please consider doing X because of Y reasons”. I can’t imagine the time and effort put into reading everything that’s been posted here. I also can’t I admit that I truly understand what it’s like to devote my waking hours into an award winning, living, evolving game, only to have people verbally kitten all over the forums just because they have a different perspective of how things should be.
I can’t say I know what it’s like to be in the shoes of the devs.
But I can say I appreciate it.
Thank you for opening up to us and thank you for being patient with us. I look forward to putting countless more hours and dollars into your game and hope you continue this open dialogue with us in years to come.
- Dahkeus
(p.s. I guess the chiming I did ended up being a bit more than brief, haha)
(p.p.s. Out of all the devs from games past that talked to the community, Gaile Gray was one of the best. I know she’s in a different role now, but she deserves special shout outs.)
I just had a wacky idea that might make some aspects of MH sword less frustrating. I’ll test it out when I get in to work and report back.
Jon
If you can pull this off, I’ll dust off my ranger and will sing your praise. Dare I say, I may be mistaken for a bard in such a task.
Hell, I might even roll a second ranger.
I just wish I could dye my weapons. =(
Confusion, isn’t op as hell.
^ Yes. Here’s the formulas from the Wiki:
The formula for confusion’s damage is:
PvE:
10 + (1.5 * Level) + (0.15 * Condition Damage) per stack
sPvP and WvW (half damage):
65 + (0.075 * Condition Damage) per stack
BEST
TRAILER
MUSIC
EVER
(for a GW2 trailer)
Yea, there are some great auto attacks and there are some terrible ones. Two of the best autoattacks in the game I believe are the Guardian hammer and the Ranger short bow.
Best Autoattacks
Guardian Hammer
The beautiful thing about this autoattack is that you have to pay attention to your swing combo for the 3rd attack. Since it’s the hardest hit of the chain, you want to pull it off before using another skill that interrupts the combo. However, you also have to pay attention to it with combo fields. If you want to help your group stack might, then you need to make sure that your fire field is down before the symbol from the attack so that you stack might on blast finishers instead of retribution.
Ranger Short Bow
The beautiful thing about this attack is that the flanking bonus really encourages you to stay on the move. However, it’s also not too restrictive. You have a large area, so that you’re not forced into a bad spot, but it is still limited enough to keep you from just standing in one spot for a long time.
Potentially Great, but Ultimately Problematic Autoattacks
Ranger Longbow
While at first glance, the autoattack of this weapon is great for the same reason as the short bow autoattack, it ends up being worse than a normal autoattack for three reasons. The first is that the long range forces you to miss out on group boons since shared boons have a 600 range, which is much shorter than the 1200 (1500 traited) longbow range. The second problem is that it is impossible to keep a max range in a lot of small areas, which can be quite common. The third problem is that it makes the 25 point Skirmishing trait, Hunter’s Tactics even harder to maintain (+10% damage while flanking) since this increases the distance you have to travel to get back in flanking position when an enemy turns. Flanking with a short bow is much more practical since you can easily stay in close range to reduce travel distance when re-positioning for flanking.
Ranger Sword
The actual combo on the autoattack of this weapon is beautiful. Taking this ability off the autoattack rewards players by allowing them to use things like the Pounce to close distance when they need to or to Kick for a needed snare. The might that is granted to a pet is also great since it keeps players involved with their pets and gives them more reason to keep their pet alive and on target.
However, the problem that moves this from being the best autoattack in the game to potentially one of the worse is that you can’t dodge during most of the autoattack animations. You can work around this by taking the ability off autocast, but in doing so, you must limit how much you use the attack beyond the occaisional tactical situation to be prepared for a potential dodge. Even with a perfect sense of awareness, you will still take hits from being stuck in animation.
The average human reaction time is about 215 milliseconds (just over 1/5 second). The cast time of Pounce is 3/4th of a second, meaning that even if you see an incoming attack during about the first 1/2 second of Pounce and have time to react to it, you won’t be able to. In other words, this prevents your skill and reaction speed from being rewarded, which is inherently counter to the way game and battle is supposed to work.
I agree with Jon that autoattacks that make you think are better than passive autoattacks, but I don’t agree all active autoattacks are better because of this. Active autoattacks are only better when they reward smart choices, not when they punish unavoidable ones.
Harvesting isn’t the only way to get iron and wood. In fact there are much faster and easier ways to obtain them. Maybe look in to those before asking the game be changed to suit your gaming behavior.
Ugh Oh! U mean buy it? or bot it? No thanks. I spent $100’s of RL money to buy full sets of permanent gathering tools for all 9 of my char, why should i have to spend money now on buying those mats?
I don’t mean to be rude with this, but you’re not really approaching this from a very efficient perspective, so it doesn’t make sense for you to argue against the inefficiency you’re encountering.
Gathering materials is rarely a cost effective use of time. Outside of Orichalcum Ore and Ancient Wood Logs, you’re almost always better off spending your time doing something more profitable (such as farming events, running dungeons, etc.) than spending your time gathering.
If you spent a bunch of RL money to invest in gathering tools…well…that’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t justify wasting even more of your resources (time) gathering. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
However, I will agree that the material cost of the high level crafting stuff is pretty ridiculous, but that’s pretty much my view on ascended stuff in general.
Hi,
So last night I made the decision to slowly get back into the game. I guess Chris Whiteside’s Collaborative discussion thread re-invigorated me with GW2. Anyways, I took a gander at what I would need for an ascended weapon. It looks…daunting. I feel it is going to be a ton of mats to just craft my way to the required crafting level. Is this true?Any tips ? Suggestions? Do most people have their ascended weapons? Is this going to be painful?
My 2 copper:
It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it was much worse than it should be.
Gear treadmills (even ones that are as slow as the one in GW2) make me a sad panda, but there’s too much other stuff I like about this game to quit over that, so I went ahead and made my ascended weapon. Honestly, the hardest part was leveling crafting to 500.
The best tip I can give: A watched pot doesn’t boil. Don’t sweat how long it takes to make the weapon.
I thought the falling traits were pretty worthless at first…
…then I started doing jumping puzzles.
Calm thyselves. The devs have acknowledged that it would have been better to give Trick-or-Treat bags in addition to PvP rewards instead of in replacement of them. There will be 2 weeks of double PvP rewards for tPvP as a result.
Source:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/PVP-rewards-bug/page/2#post3065457
I wish I had a dollar for every time I went to /roar or /flex, then realized that these aren’t available in this game.
If ANet put the option for additional emotes in the gem store, they’d get some extra cash from me.
I’m going to echo what a few others have said, but with thief, I don’t think you’ll accomplish what you set out to do by moving Hard to Catch to master tier.
I’ve played with the talent before and honestly, it’s not worth taking, regardless of where you put it. Since it doesn’t get rid of the CC, it really doesn’t do much to help and can often just move you into other AoE damage.
From my use, I found that this rarely saved me and often became too much of a liability.
I think you may have to consider re-designing this talent to some degree before you see any changes to it make any real difference.
I loved S/P in PvP before this latest patch, but even after an after cast reduction on Pistol Whip, I don’t see myself running anything but D/P. Dagger brings much more damage than sword and without a decent duration on a stun or the escape of what S/D did before, I don’t think I can really justify using a sword build in PvP.
On the bright side, S/P will be better than ever in PvE. I doubt it will still come close to daggers for single target fights, but it’ll be improved for clearing trash and may be worth taking on boss fights with the occasional add.
Eh, I thought it was a reasonably fun dungeon path. However, I think Arah and Fractals are more fun and if I’m going to commit to a long dungeon, I’ll go to one of those unless a friend/guildie just needs the achieve.
Pay attention to what enemies use in dungeons and have the right utility skills equipped to counter them. Obal’s vids are great for this, but on other dungeons, just match up the tools you have to the problems your group faces. Are there projectiles to reflect? Will you need stability? Can you group up enemies? Are there condis to cleanse? Could your group use more fire fields to stack might?
Don’t be too tough on yourself as you learn these things. It takes time to really get the hang of everything and to learn what works where.
Any thoughts on mainhand pistol builds? The Body Shot change was put into place and players have had time to test it out, but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.
Yea, +1 to what Obal said, although I’ve also seen viable variants of that build where 10 points are taken from Virtues for either Radiance (increases dps) or Honor (Strength in Numbers for group dmg reduction).
Update
Jon Peters gave an update in the Dec 10th Balance thread and stated that the 1h sword auto-attack mechanics won’t be changing:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview/page/26#post3149110
Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.
Well…that’s very disappointing, but at least we have an answer on it.
I think the thing to do is make this trait actually fire off signet of illusions thus giving it some synergy with other traits.
I’ve made this question before, and I want to make it again.
Are any traits that “fire off” specific utilities affected by traits that reduce the cooldown of those utilities? For example, for an elementalist, can I reduce the cooldown of Arcane Shielding trait with Arcane Mastery trait, or the new Burning Fire with Cantrip Mastery?
I believe so. Here’s an example of one they commented on in the Ranger forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/December-10th-Ranger-changes/first#post3133590
Considering that A ) hot join matches tend to be horribly balanced anyways and B ) players that join together just get autobalanced against each other anyways, I don’t think it matters.
However, Hot Join is pretty much the only decent option for small groups (less than 5) of friends to jump in some casual PvP (not sure if less than 5 people can even queue for tPvP anymore, but I don’t see why you would want to do that anyways). I mean, if I just want to run a few games of PvP with my wife, we can’t solo Q together, we can’t do full group tournaments, and even when we hot join, we have to hope the autobalance doesn’t try to break us up.
Honestly though, experienced full groups of players have little reason to stomp in hot joins since the glory/rank is better in tournaments anyways.
Personally, I’d rather see an 8v8 with larger maps added, similar to what GW1 had. I think this allows more diversity to be put into maps with alternate objectives and encourages more roles for players.
Just wanted to pop in here to say thank you again. There’s a epic ton-and-a-half of reading here, but to see the devs still being engaged and working with the community on these changes is really comforting. This is awesome!
The Biggest change Anet can do right now is removing bloody Signet of the Beastmaster and making that baseline.
Absolutely silly we have to invest 30 points in a line to get the same effect as everyone else.
+1
+1
+1
I never thought of this before…but I think this would be fair. As it stands, the grandmaster Marks trait is too clogged with good talents.
Yea, I’be brought this up twice on the thread. This is one of the big reasons I re-rolled. I know they have a lot to respond to, but this has been an issue since day 1.
I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s kinda frustrating since ANet has become so open on balance changes recently, yet still hasn’t addressed this.
Do you not acknowledge that many in the community like the sword? We’re not all 100% on board to want to change it. I think it works to be honest. It sucks to learn but you can.
I acknowledge this, but, after following these forums and playing the game since release, I have found that these people are mostly in the minority and primarily argue for it on the basis of preferring difficult gameplay.
I’m all for difficult gameplay, but I think it can be accomplished without clunky mechanics that provide unnecessary hindrances.
Difficulty for the sake of difficulty is not why I want it to retain it’s current functionality. I want to keep the leap because of pvp. Unless they can change the engine such that dodges break leaps, the easy solution from a programming point of view is to remove the leap. And I don’t want that. That’s where I stand, I hope that’s clear.
Who says anything about getting rid of the leap? I just want to be able to break the animation for a dodge.
There’s two threads on the ranger forums about the 1h sword. I would really like to hear why a change to the auto-attack on this weapon hasn’t been considered or if it has, what it may be. I know you have a lot on your plate, ANet, but it would really mean a lot to the rangers and the want-to-return-to-rangers if you could speak briefly on this.
Yea, I’be brought this up twice on the thread. This is one of the big reasons I re-rolled. I know they have a lot to respond to, but this has been an issue since day 1.
I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s kinda frustrating since ANet has become so open on balance changes recently, yet still hasn’t addressed this.
Do you not acknowledge that many in the community like the sword? We’re not all 100% on board to want to change it. I think it works to be honest. It sucks to learn but you can.
I acknowledge this, but, after following these forums and playing the game since release, I have found that these people are mostly in the minority and primarily argue for it on the basis of preferring difficult gameplay.
I’m all for difficult gameplay, but I think it can be accomplished without clunky mechanics that provide unnecessary hindrances.
Yea, I’be brought this up twice on the thread. This is one of the big reasons I re-rolled. I know they have a lot to respond to, but this has been an issue since day 1.
I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s kinda frustrating since ANet has become so open on balance changes recently, yet still hasn’t addressed this.
Is there any chance we could get some feedback on why there are no changes to the 1h sword for Rangers? I understand that there are only so many things you can address in a patch, but the mechanics of the auto-attack that prevent dodges has been something that has been complained about for a long time.
I forgot to mention this in my posts earlier, but thank you ANet for posting this and opening up communication on future changes. It really makes a difference to me to have your open and honest perspectives on balance changes BEFORE they go into place. I also like that you’re opening up communication for feedback.
I hope you find the feedback you need here and are able to make the necessary changes to keep the game going strong. =)
(putting this in a separate post to make things easier to read)
Thief thoughts:
I understand that a lot of the changes for thieves are based around balancing out the S/D initiative spam builds that have predominated tPvP. However, I think this is being done from too many angles and will hurt sword builds too much.
Approaching the S/D changes from addressing initiative regen and availability to vigor is, I believe the right idea. As much as I love my thief mobility, I understand why this is being done.
Putting a cast time on Shadow Return, however, will be too heavy of a change to keep sword builds viable in PvE. I understand that being able to Shadow Return on a stun stun/knockdown/etc. is still really strong, even without it being a stun break, but thieves are very, very squishy to direct damage and I believe you will see that a small change like this having a drastic effect since thieves can’t eat a stun like most other classes can.
Finally, I think pistols on thieves still need some attention. I’m really glad that the devs tried to help it out with the Body Shot change, but I think that instead of having an immobilize, the weapon set needs some mobility. Pistol/Pistol still doesn’t have access to a stealth or an evade. All other weapon sets have access to at least one of those, if not both.
Ranger sword 1 still rooting?
Why should i get 300 points in precision and 30% more critical damage if i want to use traps?
^ Agreed with this.
I’m glad to see the damage buffs to longbow though since you sacrifice so much by being long range in GW2 (all the boons your melee friends cast don’t affect you when you’re more than 600 range away). From a PvE standpoint, I’m still not sure if the damage boost is enough.
However, the 1h rooting on the main attack is still the main reason I haven’t touched my ranger in…probably close to over 6 months now? Not sure. It’s been a long time. =/
I still follow up on Ranger news/builds/etc, but I every time I try to play my ranger, it doesn’t last long.
Here’s probably what I think the #1 problem is with ranger: The skill cap for something like a spirit ranger is very low, whereas playing a sword/X ranger in PvE has a very high, unforgiving skill floor because of the root effect on sword. The damage and utility of running a 1h sword build in PvE is also so far ahead of bow builds, this means that many rangers must either submit to the wonky sword mechanics or get trash-talked for using a bow.
I have a feeling the heal is designed for when they release a new dungeon that’s condi heavy, but right now, I can’t find a reason to put it on my action bar. However, it’s not terrible for a Guardian.
Compare Antitoxin Spray to Withdraw on a thief. Withdraw has half the cooldown, heals for more, cures 1 less condition (although they are movement-hindering conditions instead of poison-like ones), and is an instant cast with an evade.
Wow…so many bitter players frothing at the mouth on this one.
I hope the devs have thick skin. Regardless of how good or bad they have bad in class balance, I feel sorry for anyone that has to deal with the people that leave comments in these forums. =(
One month for living story stuff.
However, I’d like to see more significant changes, such as new skills, races, dungeons, PvP, etc. more frequently.
Yup, just be aware that if you put the armor skin on a set of armor that is lower than level 80, you will need a different type of transmutation crystal to transfer the look of the armor to a level 80 set of gear. These transmutation crystals are the blue ones and are available from either the gem store or can be random, rare rewards from doing the daily or from opening black lion chests.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation_Crystal
This is the first thing that came to mind after seeing the female version. I could totally see my warrior doing this. Also I like the look of it, I only wish that it was separate set altogether and the female Phalanx actually looked like the male version.
(comics from the official WoW site if your wondering)
Haha, awesome comic. =)
I don’t pay a sub, so I’m fine shelling out some $ for an armor skin every once in a while.
However, as for the armor itself, I’m totally in love with the heavy skin on a human male…
but sadly my heavy armor character is a sylvari male and the shoulders are comically large when he wears that set for some reason.
Also, the heavy set is ridiculous on females, but I already have a thread on that, so I won’t go into it. >.>
Hmm…they’re both daggers and they both have snake themes, but I’m not seeing a ton of resemblance beyond that. The dagger in game has a holographic tail that wiggles around and is in an S-shape with the blade coming out of the snake head. The one you drew (which is very nice looking, btw), has the snake neck/head coiled around the hilt and is in a C-shape.
Is going all out on damage and traiting no defence/utility really necessary?
On forums all i see is 25/30/x/x/x viable. but what about 0/30/25/15/0?
i really like that build, it makes pugs a lot easier to deal with, it’s also a lot more fun to use. Does it make me a bad thief wanting to use a different build?
In game thiefs also give me a lot different opinions on builds than the ones on the forums.No, you definitely don’t have to run a build like that to be viable.
Check out the thief forums on GuildWars2Guru.com. There are a lot of good alternative thief builds there. A 25/30/0/0/15 will still get you through dungeons more efficiently than any other build if you know the fights and can time your dodges well, but you can clear all PvE content in the game with just about any build you can think of (well, top tier fractals is probably the exception), so go with what you enjoy.
Here are some threads from the Guru forums you may be interested in:
An Introduction to S/D Builds and Play Styles [Guide]
all of those builds are for either wvw or pvp
Umm…no. Many of them will work there as well, but those are primarily PvE guides to alternative builds.
I’ll +1 to the Guild vs Guild, but I would also like to see more mid-size to larger sPvP matches. I’m not talking about WvW size, but something more akin to the GvG maps in GW1.
I think that larger maps can include more diverse objectives and obstacles that can add more to diversify gameplay.
Now, I know the major balancing issue with large maps is that they can easily spread out action too much or end up with one end being deserted, while the other end is clumped up too much. This can lead to boring gameplay where players spend too much time simply travelling. However, this can be worked around by the following:
- Add objectives all over the map. Bonus capture areas, NPCs that grant bonuses, or area weapons/gates that can be controlled all work to make the entire map worth of fighting over.
- Allow a large enough player base to participate. Something like a 10 vs 10 would be nice to see.
- Add in portals, launch pads, etc. to facilitate faster travel from certain areas of the map to other areas.
For inspiration, I would highly suggest looking at both the GW1 maps as well as maps in games such as Halo.
Trick or Treat bags are a temporary reward during the Mad King festivities. We agree that it would have been better to give both Trick or Treat bags and reward chests but the system involved can, at this time, only reward one type of item at a time. We therefore made the decision to allow PvP players to participate in the game wide festivities because it is only a couple of weeks. There is an achievement that you can earn by opening Trick or Treat bags and if you take a look at this page:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-guide-to-blood-and-madness/
You will see that the contents of trick or treat bags can be used to work towards bigger rewards. Rather than give PvP players no option to work towards these rewards we decided to temporarily give out trick or treat bags.
This is by no means the final reward update to PvP. There are many things in the works regarding PvP rewards that will be rolled out over the course of several months.
I do however understand your complaints and concerns. So I’d like to offer this to you guys, if you accept Trick or Treat bags until the Mad King festivities are over, would you be happy to have double PvP reward chests for the two weeks after the festivities are over? This way those players who would like to spend their time in PvP to earn their holiday rewards can continue to spend their time in PvP and those of you who don’t want the holiday rewards can sell them on the trading post and then collect double PvP reward chests for a couple of weeks to make up for it.
Does this sound like a reasonable solution?
I’m good with this. It’s not ideal, but it’s a good compromise.
Also, thank you for working with us on this. Devs from a lot of other games I played probably would have just ignored player concerns or would have just said something along the lines of “We’re limited by our system, so we’re not doing anything” and left it at that.
Good communication from devs who acknowledge mistakes and take actions to make amends when necessary refreshes my faith in the game.
This seems like a pretty all-around good change for tPvP.
Hot joins on the other hand…it seems like now people will have even more motivation to just re-queue into another hot join when they’re losing until they either get offered an auto-balance (volunteer for glory) or end up on a winning team.
However, we may be getting more people queuing for soloQ instead of hot joins, which means less time waiting for tPvP games.
The medium armor is interesting…I can’t see myself using the entire set as it is, but it may mix and match with some other things. I may have to take a closer look when I get home later today.
