I used to prefer Staff, still want to prefer it, but I am currently too kitten off at the Phase Retreat change (my personal opinion of course, backed my many others) plus the iWarlock nerf, that makes me want to change to GS now.
Well the tooltip has always said Teleport away from your target.
It was kinda bugged before. :P
That being said, I’m not sure which I prefer. I like that the new one always puts distance between me and the target instantly.
OTOH I like that I can use the old one to teleport around inside a combo field.
Teleport away from your target is a vague description then, no? Old behavior also teleported you away from the target, but it was consistent that it did so always backwards, now it’s unpredictable, varying distances, backwards or forward, zoomed in on your character, which can reverse your direction. In my mind, the skills has been definitely made worse. It is a nightmare now if you are trying to defend a point. I want my old PR back.
Then the problem would be you will see every Mesmer running around with all 3 phantasms always spawned around them, it would be make it unfair, for say, the same Thief, to engage because you will have all the clones up already. They could make it so we could only spawn them when in combat, but I don’t see that happening either – because right now you can spawn them out of combat as long as the target gets into range, which is the way I prefer.
In conclusion, I think it’s fine right now as it is.
By trying to fix Phase Retreat for not getting stuck into terrain, it is now broken in another aspect, or maybe “behaves differently” if you want to call it that.
OLD BEHAVIOR:
Before I would know exactly where I would get ported – it would port me backwards not far away from where I am standing.
CURRENT BEHAVIOR:
Now in many cases it ports me in totally random direction, varying distances; for example, before I would stand in one corner of the capture point and know that by phase retreating I will NOT get teleported out of the point boundaries, but now I will get teleported away from the point (this is critical on small area points like Windmill on Kyhlo). Very hard to keep the point if you are defending it
Additionally, sometimes after the port it will zoom in all the way into my character, it’s very annoying; or my character will be facing another direction which is very disorienting combined with the zoom in.
I do not believe this is intended behavior, and should be looked into.
I wouldn’t write off Sword/Dagger.
-While flanking strike isn’t the greatest, it got a small buff in the patch for unblockable boon removal, ideal for things like guardian
I want to clear this up, and emphasize that the skill was NOT individually buffed, but rather the boon removal mechanic was fixed which was not supposed to be blockable in the first place. This was fixed for all boon removal abilities, such as Mesmer’s Arcane Thievery, etc.
Flanking Strike still remains to be a sub-par #3 ability, as many would agree.
I bet mid-day Monday, to stagger the server load since various people around the world will be working/schooling/sleeping.
This will never happen mid-day just because of how software release cycles generally work. My speculations for release are:
- 23:59PM PST Sunday
- Sometime past midnight Monday (~1AM)
- Early morning Monday
- Sometime late evening Monday but unlikely because for some it will already be Tuesday
So the first two are highly likely scenarios knowing of their previous patching experiences, though because this is the first major content patch – who knows.
Noticed that as of today (or maybe even yesterday, didn’t pay attention) PvP hydromancy sigils are broken. It wasn’t proccing in PvP games, and I have tested it on practice golems as well – the animation is gone and it’s not applying any debuffs. Anyone can confirm?
Not a bug, it just feels like you have lost the passive effect, but every class has reduced speed when in combat. You can test this by having a race with someone, both be in combat, you will still outrun the other person.
Pretty much this. Yes, MOA is powerful, but it can be easily countered by dodging or blocking. The cast is 2 seconds long with a pretty visible animation. Moreover, as a bird, you can move and dodge, just run away and dodge. To “balance” it – I would suggest adding better bird abilities, something more useful, because no on ever uses the Moa abilities, it is better to just run away.
Moa Morph is powerful. VERY powerful in smaller scale PVP, but it loses effectiveness in two ways:
1.) The player can flee and avoid combat once he’s moa’d. I know I haven’t died to being moa’d in a while thanks to being able to flee.
2.) In large scale PVP, taking one person temporarily out of commission for some seconds is rather lackluster (in most cases), especially when compared to group-wide quickness or stealth that other elite skills bring to the table.
Although it’s annoying when you’re turned into the kitten bird, it’s definitely able to be dealt with. I wouldn’t call it anywhere near an I WIN button unless we’re talking about 1v1 PVP, which the game isn’t balanced around anyways.
20 second exit portal would be cool, but I don’t think that would be case. I am thinking the “bug” is in the tooltip, unfortunately. Honestly though, 10 seconds is more than enough.
If you have ran sPvP, the range is approximately between side point and middle point on PvP maps, can go slightly further than that even, but never between two side points.
Agree with most of you, especially since it is a combo field, hence the initial visible contour. However, my only quarrel is that since it is primarily a stealth skill, the visibility of the field makes the skill counter-intuitive. Stealth, for many thief specs, is one of the primary defensive abilities – and when that is easily being countered then I strongly believe that it is broken. Maybe an exception should be made in this case where foes cannot see the field whatsoever, even if it is a combo field (which will be visible to friendlies), it’s not like it is a damaging field where you absolutely have to avoid standing in.
The sole purpose of finishers is that it looks a lot cooler than the standard boring finishers, also indicating your rank, however it is kind of sad that ArenaNet took its sweet time to implement Wolf Finishers when people hit rank 30, and now as people reach rank 40, we have the same situation – Tiger Finishers are simply NOT done. What gives.
I know fixing stuff takes time, especially if it’s a hard bug to catch, but what annoys me is that such critical situations take a lot of time, sometimes I think that ANet’s iterative process and “when it’s ready” stance is NOT good for patching. This bug has now been in the wild since Sunday. The guardians’ block bug has been in the wild for 2+ weeks now which completely RUINS the game. I am pretty surprised that ANet is so passive about it. I will admit this is my first game by ANet, but I’ve seen other games (including MMOs) fix critical bugs within a day or two max.
When casting Shadow Refuge, an enemy will see the red contour of the field. How does this make sense? It is a stealth skill, but yet the enemy knows exactly where you are because you can’t leave the field without being revealed. Baffles me really.
Well, that was completely disappointing given how long we had to wait for it. Not a peep on balance or even an acknowledgement? Just a brief discussion on features that probably should have been in at release.
Nice and all, but I care more about the state of the classes and the balance around them than any of this. The game likewise can’t be taken seriously as an eSport with so much bugged and out of whack among the classes. I was expecting and hoping for some news on what you plan to do about making an even playing field before you go on about adding more playing fields.
spvp has been a litany of disappointment since release.
Came to say exactly this. The blog post that we have been waiting almost a month now has been very anti-climactic. The two pieces of information that we received has already pretty much been a common knowledge in circulation – what’s new?
Not to mention that auto-attack does more damage combined in the same amount of time as FS would. If I am in a team fight, and CCs are being coordinated or I know that I will not be getting hit, then I would always use auto-attack (or CnD+auto) instead of FS — so I see something inherently wrong with the skill that costs 4 initiative and is unreliable.
Flanking Strike has a lot of potential being a great skill, but IMHO hardly anyone uses it. It feels too clunky, slow and unpredictable, and thus misses a lot. If the target is moving on many occasions the second strike will almost never hit.
Some suggestions:
- Reduce delay between first and second strike.
- Increase range from 130 to 240.
- Fix weird pathing issues.
While 5v5 hot-joins would be nice, the inherent problem of zergyness will not go away – the culprit is the point system hence most folks just run back and forth in packs capping and uncapping points and occasionally the two zergs would meet. So even in a 5v5 setting don’t expect to “practice”.
On several occasions I’ve been feared by a Necromancer for a good, at least, 10 seconds duration. Once during hot-join game and once during a tournament by a single Necro with no one else around. I am not even exaggerating – the fear lasted at least 10 seconds (when I hovered over the Fear icon the time kept resetting back to 7 seconds several times), I was feared FROM the Mine point TO the water down below. Even with +fear duration traits and runes it would still be impossible.
Is this some sort of a bug/exploit, or am I missing something?
There are so many ignorant people it’s ridiculous.
Just for example, today in the Mists chat one Necro was QQing about a Thief fearing him, not aware that it was a stolen ability and not a native Thief skill. On a related note, there was another person still convinced that stolen abilities are random.
Several days ago in a tournament, one of the players accused one of ours being a “bot” for teleporting from point to point and threatened to make a report, not aware that I was dropping Mesmer portals between points.
Conclusion – People will rage and QQ without getting all the facts straight.
A thief that does 14k backstab crit has 1900 toughness (meaning he takes x1.5 damage than he would if he had 2500), and around 10k health.
Did you mean 900 toughness? Because 1900 is way too high for a glassy high-damage Thief. My build/setup is very glass, maxed for damage output and I have 966 toughness.
Does anybody else think that PvP Medium Armor is so visually underwhelming compared to light and/or heavy armor of the same rank?
I am currently rank 31, and have been buying a lot of wolf chests, as well as crafting at the PvP mystic forge, but none of the medium armor even comes close to looking as good as light/heavy. It’s like the designers first did the light and heavy armor and then got really lazy when it came to medium.
This is of course my personal opinion, but I am sure there are others who feel the same way.
I did not find this bug listed here, so I apologize if I missed it.
Inspiration Trait – Malicious Sorcery
The tooltip for scepter skill Illusionary Counter will correctly change from 12 seconds to 9.5 seconds recharge timer, however when activated the recharge timer will still start counting down from 11 seconds.
It seems to be the only ability bugged from this trait, Confusing Images for example has its recharge timer correctly reduced.
When can we expect to see the first wave of balance changes, trait fixes, and sigil fixes?
I know you are currently busy with making this game stable and fixing major general bugs since the release, but there’s a big portion of players who are only doing sPvP which is the end-game for us, and as it currently stands a lot of it is broken:
- A lot of profession traits are downright broken.
- Sigils are broken.
- Balance changes.
- Paid Tournaments?
- or Private Server at least?
Any news would be much appreciated on what your plans are to release the first wave of changes that affect sPvP.
To add to this, Greater Marks also does NOT make marks unblockable as the trait states – on many occasions I’ve seen my marks being blocked when triggered.
Greater Marks (which increases the radius of marks) trait is bugged for both staff #2 and #3
For #2 “Mark of Blood” the size of the mark on the ground appears as the original small size even when placed (not just the target marker). However it affects the larger radius like it is supposed to.
For #3 “Chillbains” the size of the mark on the ground is the proper larger size, but when activated it only affects the original smaller size. This is pretty bad since if you place it and a target walks into it, they set off the mark but aren’t affected by it since when it “goes off” it just affects the original 120 radius zone.
Right now as far as #3 is concerned it’s actually better to NOT have the greater marks trait, since if you don’t put it right on the target’s head when you use it it’s going to get set off and probably not affect anyone.
Right now #4 and #5 seem to be the only ones that actually work as intended, placing the proper larger sized mark on the ground and affecting the full large area normally.
Agreed on the stealth needing some improvement seeing as it is a major part of the Thieves. I understand being hit by AoE, but channeled spells should probably disengage when a Thief goes in stealth; but the most annoying part is when Mesmer illusions, Ranger pets, or Necro minions all stand around you just waiting with a big pointy arrow HE IS RIGHT HERE.
