Guild Wars 2

As a general security measure, it is typically wiser to use third parties, particularly paypal, for managing payments, due to their above-standard security procedures and strict attention to security given the dependency of their business hinging on it.

Also be sure to use 2FA to prevent malicious/unwanted access to your account, and do not use public wifi networks to access your GW2 account; transmissions can be recorded and decoded by attackers, and it isn’t uncommon for them to sell the information they get this way.

Reloadable gift cards/“prepaid debit” cards are a good option, however they typically have a reload cost associated to them every time you add more funds. It’s typically a few dollars and can be pretty inefficient if you don’t intend to keep a relatively high balance of a few hundred dollars.

I personally do the following and recommend it as the best option for maintaining security online: Get a credit card dedicated to online purchases that has a freeze or lock option on it, which can only be activated or deactivated on the credit card’s site via another login, and a separate, clean device used only for managing your online banking and billing which you use to unlock and lock the card when you go to purchase something (I use an old netbook due to its small size which fits nicely on my desk loaded with a Linux distro for fast booting speeds to get to the browser). For credit cards which have them, these are typically free features (and I think Discover does them best) and in the long run will save you money and potentially hassle over most reloadable debit options.. If you’re really into the security aspect of things, you can even set this device up on a different LAN.

The only thing a trinity is is just a forced, developer-side meta.

The chaos of combat in GW2 and focus on everything at once is what makes it so excellent, and what was a huge can-opener in how to make many builds viable.

Outside of raids, the existence of PvE metas were solely determined by players as a means of completing content efficiently. The lack of diverse encounters and changes to the dungeon scene were ultimately what culminated in so much toxicity and elitism. Forcing a trinity doesn’t do anything to resolve the issue.

Seeing as the lack of trinity is a fundamental pillar of what defines GW2, I’d prefer it not to change (it’s the sole reason I even gave this game any consideration at all, initially, and was a huge bonus to others), and I don’t think it’d be in ANet’s best interests to do such a thing.

redux.1502:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ayrilana.1396:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ashen.2907:

CptAurellian.9537:

I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.

As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.

This.

My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.

This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.

Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.

Except the raid team is comparably smaller than the rest of the staff so it doesn’t really matter.

But the raid team only designs raids. General balance and polish pays direct attention to the results of raid viability and often balances professions solely on this basis.

Most of the big changes we’ve seen since HoT have been a direct reaction to raid viability, because most of them would be otherwise unjustified, or should have seen reworks entirely rather than numbers changes.

Even a substantial portion of LS references raid content/raid story.

You can access that raid story and content in the LS and experience it in a cleared raid wing if you really want to.

Balance ALSO has a lot to do with PvP.
Arguably PvE content (outside raids and fractals) doesn’t need balance as it’s really doable in any gear/build.

And that’s the thing; so much of the balance adjustments have seemingly been developed as a result of PvE normalization. It doesn’t make sense, but if you look at a lot of the big-nature changes that have gone down (thief AA, ele damage, rev healing and alacrity, druid/pet tweaks, chrono wells and alacrity, and so on, they’ve been based largely on PvE performance.

And raids don’t directly influence attention elsewhere; however, ANet is and has been quick to dismiss the developers on other major tasks (like Tyler Bearce on WvW) to send them to other content while leaving the raids team intact. And at the end of the day, most of WvW and sPvP’s problems are due to the imbalances and lack of diversity in builds keeping players from being interested in playing. Even server lag in WvW is explainable from a failure of profession design based on old info provided by developers regarding server lag and some studying of the WvW community.

It’s a far-reaching problem that’s been exacerbated by the attention Raids have received and how they’ve been upheld as such prominent content, but not a direct result of raids themselves directly shrinking resources.

Ayrilana.1396:

DeceiverX.8361:

Ashen.2907:

CptAurellian.9537:

I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.

As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.

This.

My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.

This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.

Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.

Except the raid team is comparably smaller than the rest of the staff so it doesn’t really matter.

But the raid team only designs raids. General balance and polish pays direct attention to the results of raid viability and often balances professions solely on this basis.

Most of the big changes we’ve seen since HoT have been a direct reaction to raid viability, because most of them would be otherwise unjustified, or should have seen reworks entirely rather than numbers changes.

Even a substantial portion of LS references raid content/raid story.

Spartacus.3192:

The problem is that from a psychology point of view. ANET gave super easy rewards in Season 5 to encourage PVE players into PVP. Then this season they went overboard with the amount of grind necessary to get the gear. Since PVE players by definition can get ascended gear by other means it is now easier and most likely more fun for PVE players to get their ascended gear in their preferred game mode.

The ascended gear from PVP is in no way an enticement for those players anymore,

Yes pvp players will play but that’s not the point. PVP has a population issue. The S6 rewards do nothing to bring players who may not really care for the game mode.

I like pvp but as I said before if I don’t enjoy the season (for whatever reason) there is no additional incentive to keep playing. May as well be in WvW with its super slow rewards.

Which begs the question as to why PvP has a population issue.

It all comes down to gameplay and general balance. Yes, the meta might be balanced, but a strict majority of players aren’t going to prefer playing the meta.

Most people would just rather not play than play something they don’t enjoy playing.

Build diversity is what defines format success. I mean look at WvW. Most of the HoT problems are fixed, and yet it’s dying faster and faster, because patch by patch the diversity gets even more restricted, which before HoT, it had the most represented build diversity of all formats, despite a few OP’s.

Bottom line is that for many, particularly competitive players, the game is just no longer fun. This has been expressed repeatedly by the pro players, too. Everything is too strict and not open for much experimentation, and most of what’s good just breaks the “is-fun” aspects of combat like passives, CC deflection, and build denial.

babazhook.6805:

AikijinX.6258:

Yes those were the glory days. When Mug Trait was the thing that downed foes, not our backstab. The backstab was complimentary. Once Legendary Armor comes out, I’ll see what kind of numbers I get. And at that point new sigils would be available, since they are introducing them in PvP first.

Pulled off a 8000+ mug against a player last night. I am not sure what he was wearing and how many vuln stacks he had on but the base steal hit at 3600.

If you pull an 8k mug you’d be backstabbing for almost 50k.

Either that guy just wasn’t wearing armor and had vuln, and you had might, or it was’t Mug that did that much damage.

Way back when, Mug could crit, and it was totally obscene since the change from Crit Damage to Ferocity also caused an effective crit damage reduction of almost 15%. Given that most players that early on before it was changed to not be able to crit were in exotics/rares and mostly were in berserker gear, it wasn’t uncommon to have just one-shot any opposing thieves and eles. Combined with CnD and 14 might stacked from SA a Mug engage allowed for pretty consistent instant-kills without even using backstab. Which, mind you, since Revealed also didn’t exist, could be done entirely from stealth without leaving it with D/P + D/D swapped in.

Mug still hits hard (or for the most part can still hit hard, but nowhere near the ballpark of 8k outside of totally unrealistic scenarios.

@10k backstabs being big, it’s really not. Spec HM and Bound and you already bring similar damage to what CS offers, which can pretty readily get over 10k on most builds.

Sigil of Impact + Force/Night can also bump this pretty easily during the CC of BV to well over 10k.

A proper signet build should be consistently stabbing between 18-25k when fully-optimized.

Ashen.2907:

CptAurellian.9537:

I don’t get all the QQ about raids being evil. Haven’t ever set a foot into them, but it does not feel like I’m missing something important with regard to the rest of the story.

As to the original question: no, it doesn’t feel as if GW2 had lost its identity.

This.

My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.

This isn’t a valid analogy. It indicates that there aren’t resource contentions over what’s being released. More comparable is that your favorite restaurant is busy and is thus adding more seats to cater to more customers while not increasing the waitstaff or number of cooks. This will negatively impact the experience of dining there. Or, to go with the menu example, is like if your favorite dish being moved to an occasional special since it’s not ordered often and the restaurant is out of room on the menu to fit it.

Raids are undeniably getting a lot of attention from developers not even in the raids team (like profession design and balance), and that’s a resource problem and a very big contention problem between formats which has led to a lot of mixed responses and negativity. You can do some numbers tweaks, but a lot of the issues people have complained about have been design-level and intention rather than numerical complaints.

I’m not really sure what purpose this fulfills outside of trolling with permanent evasion. It doesn’t really bring anything to duels or group play.

I have a pretty good feeling I know what you’re using but feel free to PM me as you mentioned in-game earlier, Aikijin. Always up for some discussion.

zengara.8301:

sorry but no, there are 2 different formats, PvE and PvP, the PvP format is depended on the enemy moving (mobile) a lot of different pvp guilds have made it their job to specialize the current meta, and some1 place it as meta (The same goes with GvG, like I am in one, and build is totally different from pvp and pve and ofc PvE) I have been in the most prestige running PvE guilds that tested your ways to encounter lupi, what kind of food, if you took invigoration precision (think it was called something different back in the day)but that healed part of your outgoing dmg, that was the weak way etc /PvP where we trained 3 times per week, we werent the greatest but mic and fight 1v1 is a must….. and GvG now, which you probably already know what requires.

I will put an example, the format to PvE and PvP is completely different. While as an ele in PvE fire/air is the requirement, either staff with fire/air/staff with fire or dagger/Wh with fire air (depends on how big boss are) then its completely different in PvP and GvG, GvG requires you to take earth/water while PvP requires you to take air/earth…..

In conclusion…….I have learned through personal interaction with some of the best in each of their respected groups(pvp,gvg,pve), that even though they might look at each other, they are each testing out the best ability based on their respected play, or they simply would lose since others are not following the format of PvE when in GvG.

ohh and that the best way to learn “specializations” as they are called now, is to solo bosses in arah…for me at least, it really shows the exact dmg output, life gain etc you get from each of them, its almost like it shapes out each and every aspect of the minor/majors you use, and how far you can get with them (what really works best with each individual boss).

I don’t think you actually understood my post.

Nowhere did I say PvE and PvP have the same meta. There will always be a meta on some level. The question is how strong those optima are relative to their corresponding sub-optima.

Right now, there’s very little room for movement based on the inherent design of the professions.

And the elite specs being poorly-designed has no effect in PvE because monsters aren’t sentient and can’t complain about un-fun mechanics.

Junkpile.7439:

If you spam skills every direction you might get lucky hit. Of course you need like 10 lucky hits to actually kill him.

For the most part, far more than 10 if he’s dire/TB.

I meant no competition in the GvG sense. ESO is okay, but fairly gimmicky and the combat is much less fluid. GW2’s current market will eventually phase out with other new shinies; a lot of the core audience has honestly since left. P2W isn’t a competitive experience no matter how you break it down.

The thing is, a game can be rewarding, require a high degree of skill, and not be a massive time sink. “Hardcore” games like WIldstar have always failed in the west just because of the nature of “waiting to hit endgame” where the real fun begins. GW2 defied this and did very well initially.

The problem is that GW2 hasn’t been maintained to keep the endgame fun for everyone; just PvE. Endless power creep and some maybe unhealthy profession design decisions work in PvE, which is fine, but absolutely not in PvP environments. The people that like the grind/PvE side will not care what game they play for the most part, so long as it’s a fun and relatively affordable endeavor. GW2 offers a pretty solid experience here. Ultimately, games are in it for the money, and mass-appeal is the big ticket. It’s why MOBA’s, particularly league of legends, have done so well; you can pick up a game with an hour of free time and then be off to do something else. They’re intrinsically simple but have a lot of depth and a high skill cap. It doesn’t take months/years to max out and really begin biting down into the content. It’s why WoW provides basically max-level character boosts to the previous expansion’s content for new players; cutting down on the tedium is generally a good idea.

Catering towards a hardcore crowd never has let a game be successful, except for maybe the Souls franchise. But even then, Demon’s Souls wasn’t exactly a hot-seller, and it initially was for a very niche audience. Dark souls got popular mostly out of meme value. And it’s a very well-made game/series all-around. Not to mention that the game itself is pretty pickup-friendly. If you don’t die often, all of the games are very short and don’t take too long to beat.

Jski.6180:

OriOri.8724:

Jski.6180:

Swagger.1459:

Chaba.5410:

OriOri.8724:

Vitality doesn’t mitigate condi damage at all.

…

I am not ignoring the over time aspect of condis.

Here it is again for you. I think you’re still struggling with the concept of “more than” and “over time”. DoT is a difficult concept to understand because it is easy to forget that damage totals require time and mitigation of it includes time-based solutions.

HP pool of 10,000k
Condi dmg per tick of ~ 100 takes 1000 ticks to cause death.
Direct dmg requires single “tick” of 10,000k to cause death.

vs.

HP pool of 15,000k
Condi dmg per tick of ~ 100 takes 500 more seconds than above to cause death.
Direct dmg requires single “tick” of 5k more than above to cause death.

Player with the stacked Vitality/increased HP pool has 500 more seconds in the above scenario to remove the condition before death than the player who didn’t invest in Vitality.

Good thing Anet devs understand DoT mechanics and provide damage totals over time in the skill tips, not per-tick amounts.

I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but your argument using vitality is not rational by any means…

There is no core character stat that directly reduces incoming condition damage the way toughness and armor function, and you are more than welcome to confirm that with any developer.

Its not about reducing the blunt condi number but reducing its effectiveness at killing players.
As things stand hp is balanced before they added in condi stacking and higher over all gear for condi dmg. In a lot of ways the lost of gurd stacks (vit from killing wvw npc) has pushed wvw to being more condi base then burst power dmg base.

Again, vitality protects against both power and condi damage, while power is still mitigated by toughness. Why is it that there are 2 stats against power but only 1 against condis?

Well that because when the game first came out condi dmg was utility aimed not the dmg aimed monster that it is today but it was buffed though the other things that counter dmg where not. There more that counters power dmg then just toughness and most counter dmg in the game is aimed at dealing with power dmg. See weakness protection and how much blunt dmg taken -% there is.

This is what so many people fail to recognize.

Almost very single weapon skill, utility skill, and trait in their design in GW2 was originally made without condition damage in mind. The condition damage stat after release didn’t even exist until later on. It was a source of damage output for “true damage” for tanks and might-heavy builds.

The game has inflated condition potency so much, while also introducing Dire/TB gear and so much power damage negation, that there’s very little associated risk to running the build/style and not a lot designed inherently to negate it within the core functionality of the game. Yes, there is resistance and cleanses, but that doesn’t mean much. Cleanses are necessary when against power builds, too, for the sake of managing control effects and utility, and there are several builds able to achieve 90% reductions in incoming power damage which have no effect on conditions. Most players since HoT are running close to 50% or more permanently. Arguing against this is just simply arguing against fact.

It’s also why cleanses are so inconsistent between professions/builds. They were initially meant more for control and a smaller DoT as a side effect rather than just raw damage numbers.

So there needs to be some fundamental change to how conditions work in order to balance them. I don’t think a negation stat is the way to go. It doesn’t solve any problems unless that negation is applied to pretty much every other set.

It’s unlikely ANet will revisit all weapon skills and traits and re-design them. They can’t even do that with the most useless of weapons as it is. So that’s off the table.

The alternative is reducing baseline condition potency and durations across applications of effects, and including critical conditions which DoT for double (near current values susceptible to testing), and then keeping Expertise around and making it a bit more accessible. This ends up nerfing kits like Dire/TB as burst-DoT-tanks while not changing squishier condition kits, if not slightly buffing them.

Though this is equally unlikely since it’d require a rework of existing gear combos and a slight revision of numbers across the board in general, which has also proven to be very demanding from ANet.

@OP
Rapid Fire has a lower effective cooldown than backstab when factoring in initiative regeneration. Add it regularly hits harder coming from tankier builds with better mobility, and it doesn’t get negated entirely on a passive aegis proc.

Also, Maul can be built to easily deal 50%+ more damage than backstab, particularly at those numbers.

Cheers.

expandas.7051:

I’m not sure if it’s due to EU culture being different but the builds, tactics, and role you guys have assigned to Mesmer are completely contrary to their top-end NA counterparts. Shatter doesn’t put enough AoE damage to be viable for large scale. The extra damage of great sword doesn’t outweigh the utility of staff. Chaos/Insp/Chrono IS the cookie-cutter build for a reason, and the allocation of stats for gearing must reflect that.

There are other insights but to get back on topic once you have the correct build, tactics, and understand your role it’s actually NOT that difficult to pick things up. There’s a few L2P issues with maximizing your rotation and positioning but it’s not rocket science. This would suggest that large scale Mesmer has a relatively shorter skill cap than some of the other professions, i.e., investing additional time/effort in Mesmer to “get gud” once you’re already decent doesn’t pay off as well.

So large scale Mesmer has a smaller skill cap or ceiling, but what about its impact on a zerg’s success, “when played to it’s skill cap”? I think its contribution is significant, definitely in the top third. The extra utility is simply jaw dropping, whether it’s superior mobility, healing the train, or detargetting. Capable Mesmers are sharing every boon in the game, including quickness, resistance, and stability. These are things that can change the outcome of a fight more than the incremental benefits you would get from other classes.

Same deal in NA. I don’t know of any mesmers that even suggest using shatters outside of F4 in blobs. Most are condi, anyways, since it packs so much more durability in it of itself, and because all of WvW is now condi builds (stack em more), including guards and frontline in ZvZ. Power in organized play has been pretty much phased out entirely.

Mostly a utility-oriented spec, and it can be super strong. They’re utilized by groups with people that know how to utilize them. The big difference is that most groups don’t have those kinds of players; most skillgroups in general all left the format/game.

Mostly it’s nostalgia of the glory days for many, I think, and a combination of habit and lack of competition from other games. I’m pretty sure when CU launches this format will outright die.

Before HoT, I think WvW was the best GvG and small-scale (non-MOBA) experience out there. Given a little attention I think it probably could have been the best to come for many years, including CU. Currently, it’s just un-fun because the balance and profession design is just abysmal. It’s for the most part just no longer fun and engaging to fight other people from all the powercreep and un-fun/bad design.

So people doing it for four years had a ball. Now? Almost everyone I played with in the past has quit WvW or GW2 entirely solely because of how bad WvW currently is and has been for the past ~year.

Blaeys.3102:

In my opinion, it can almost all be linked back to how they have chosen to include raids in the game.

So, how did raids change the “identity” of the game? I admit they are only one small piece. They dont really detract from the development of other content. And, they are fairly well done (most of them).

The actual problem comes from the average players’ desire to experience the entire PVE picture – from the ambient creature sitting idly half way through a jumping puzzle to the last boss in the last raid wing.

A year and a half ago, players could experience every element of the PVE game without compromising how they played. Every profession, every build and every stat set was reasonably feasible in every part of the game. And, in the one area where more difficult content was being added (fractals), there was a scaling system.

Raids changed that. For the first time since launch, there was a part of the game that forced players to “optimize” their characters. There was no scaling or any real way for many players to retain their character’s identity and still have a reasonable chance at experiencing the content.

This single change has had huge repercussions in how players perceive the game and the direction it is now going. Now, the only players who get to experience it all are those who are willing to (at least partially) homogenize their builds, stat sets and playstyles.

And that is bad.

NOTE: I do not see challenging content or even raids as bad things in the game. It is definitely needed and fills a much needed niche. It is the lack of scaling (easy, hard mode) that creates this issue. Players who feel excluded from PVE content they perceive as endgame (especially when it relates to story) will grow (are growing and have grown) disillusioned with the game.

+1

This is most notably apparent in WvW which did not have a strict meta except for zergbusting, and even then, defying convention to counter your enemy groups and playing a class well went much further than just the build one played. Sadly, content clearly only problematic in Raid design and PvE has frequently made it to being the PvP formats, and in the case of our elite specs, seem to have been based entirely on PvE encounters from their design.

As of now, the game should just be renamed to Build Wars. I’m very attached to certain styles and aesthetics in every game I play, and often simply just don’t play a game when that isn’t there. GW2 went from absolutely awesome in this regard (being a more competitive player) to just abysmally bad.

The game, particularly on the game-mechanic level with such strict enforcement of build use, is just not as fun. I find myself not wanting to play my characters most times, because they’ll either be absolutely terrible if I choose to play them in a certain way, and absolutely distaste the current optimized builds.

I’d say its lost identity isn’t inherently the type of content they’re releasing but kind of the nature of how they’re releasing it.

GW2 was originally all about fun no matter what you did. Very open and exploratory systems in general.

The case now is just it seems very narrow in its scope and intentions for each piece of content while not considering the greater game, with many of these narrow-scope releases, and many of these new releases just aren’t fun for a large number of players. At least not to the initial mass-appeal crowd the game tried to cater towards at release. This is particularly true for sPvP/WvW and the casual PvE scene.

So while I don’t necessarily think they’ve totally lost their vision, I think ANet has lost control of its game. There are many “un-fun” things still around from multiple years ago. Critical reworks to keep the game fresh and exciting and just generally more fun for everyone have yet to come. The game’s stagnation is very much against ANet’s original philosophy of trying to make the game very lively and ever-changing.

So while LS’s may not be a maintainable content delivery model due to the stress, the issues extend into almost every aspect of the game. ANet’s trying to do too much while pushing out new content, and not fixing what is in some areas a crumbling underlying foundation.

Make sure to factor in 25 stacks of vuln.

Straegen.2938:

DeceiverX.8361:

Unload with more than one activation will out-damage PW with other subsequent re-activations from the might stacking.

On a single hit, the most potent ability without Daredevil is Backstab. Given Daredevil, vault does slightly more damage and can be built to deal substantially more.

Unload is single target thus its damage is capped much sooner than PW. In a multi-target situation, PW has a significantly higher DPS. I think that gets missed a lot when people talk about how powerful Unload is. It is great 1v1… as soon as those numbers escalate (which they often do in PvE and WvW), its total DPS in comparison to multi-target skills drops.

Dare Devil traits and staff are not relevant given the 60 or less discussion.

Backstab is also a bit of a red herring since it cannot be chained. Over time DPS of Backstab is quite poor because of the 3s minimum and single target nature.

Pre-60, there’s very little need to build into mass-cleave. I answered the OP’s question in full and for the future. No reason to oppose providing extra info for the future. Plus the wiki as of when I last looked at Vault, is incorrect in its coefficient, which is why I answered about it.

If the OP has no intention of using anything except one button and never intends to use his AA chain, then yes, D/X isn’t a good idea. But that’s also a terrible idea in general. Otherwise, a D/D backstab build using AA’s will bring competitive burst and the absolute undeniable best DPS per initiative, and features the third-hardest-hitting skill on core thief, and second hardest-hitting single attack on the thief/daredevil in general/hardest-hitting on core, with the highest potential kill rate.

Lol, sigil of strength nerfed.

Sigil of Generosity nerf. General condition cleansing options and sustain nerfed, condition damage output buffed.

Power-might Spite necro was way too overpowered, yup.

Sigil of Revelations actually just outright deleted D/D power thief. Like straight up, this weapon set is no longer even physically possible to play in any competitive sense if your opponent runs the sigil. It’s unfortunate, but it’s pretty kitten ed obvious that the only intended diversity in the game is what’s currently in the meta and absolutely nothing more.

I’m actually pretty certain this is probably the final nail in the coffin for my time in GW2. I love that you’ve embraced the community Evan, but there’s so much out of control design right now that even the non-viable fun builds just keep getting nerfed harder and harder.

Xenesis.6389:

Power should have always been the main way to deal damage in the game, conditions should have been secondary damage that puts pressure on the opponent who need to react with a cleanse. That’s what it seems like the system was built as for 3 years. Instead now they have boosted conditions to do as much damage or more, access to just as fast damage bursting capabilities, added more conditions, more auto proccing damage conditions, and took off the stack caps.

They’ve developed a terrible system trying to go 2 completely separate ways for doing damage and dealing with that damage, it’s a bloody mess that they will most likely never clean up. Just have to deal with it or not at all.

Initially, this was how the game was. There was originally no way to achieve bonus condition damage outside of might. Conditions were meant for control and as a source of bonus “true damage” which tanks and supportive builds to play into (note that many condition-oriented weapons and trait-lines feature extra defenses in their design).

With people demanding DoT builds, however, ANet took the lazy solution (what else is new) of just utilizing the condition framework.

Then they added Dire, which was still pretty broken even before the condi buffs.

Then PvE players whined they didn’t deal enough damage to beat CoF in 5 minutes with their pug groups, and demanded condition build buffs.

Power still topped the chart in optimal PvE play, and peopled whined, so ANet released Sinister gear to enable better DPS.

And then people still whined it wasn’t optimal in speed clear groups composing of a minuscule fraction of the population, so they buffed conditions more with the release of HoT, and made TB to keep the builds oppressive in WvW for whatever reason.

And now we’re here.

Signet burst is ideally best-done with CS/DA/DrD as well in staff. A perfect attack against a glassy opponent can get a bit over a 30k vault, while Daredevil provides more escape and utility than what’s really gained from Tr.

D/D’s just a failure kit for power against reasonably good players running the meta unless you kit yourself out with tons of sustain (in which case your burst is over). Given the ICD on stealth attacks and poor performance on the rest of the kit, it’s pretty easy to get instantly countered by a passive and have no answers when playing signets. For burst, D/P is more consistent and much safer with better engage potential out of the stealth capabilities from two different leap finishers to use on BP.

Unload with more than one activation will out-damage PW with other subsequent re-activations from the might stacking.

On a single hit, the most potent ability without Daredevil is Backstab. Given Daredevil, vault does slightly more damage and can be built to deal substantially more.

Yup, mechanical keyboards are designed to activate with almost zero actuation. You need to make shallower presses and let go faster :P

Otherwise, if you’re a bottom-outer like I am, look into another keyboard type.

If you’re not playing D/D condi or Staff, there is no real rotation on thief for the most part. Otherwise it’s just alternating Dodge and Death Blossom/Vault with the routine endurance refill and the likes. With the lack of cooldowns, you can’t just use everything when it’s available. You have your basic combos and skill knowledge, and the rest is just improvising play and acting accordingly. The more you know about the profession, the crazier stunts you can pull off when you need to. The 100-0 comes largely on the basis that they caught the opponent off-guard. A strict 100-0 when the opponent sees you coming, on a build that is capable of extensive 1v1, is better done on a mesmer, ranger, guardian, warrior, or scrapper.

Crit Strikes is a waste of a line. DA deals more burst damage in general, has fantastic utility, and provides a lot of power damage resistance from innate weakness on steal. Unless you PvE, there’s very little benefit to using CS, which deals only a very minute more damage than Daredevil itself. PvE usually runs CS/DA/DrD.

In general, the thief is boring in PvE, especially now. A majority of the damage comes from pressing 1 in D/D (power, since the weapon damage on dagger > pistol by a fractional amount and the other skills are not used) or staff. To match the HoT powercreep, ANet just buffed its AA’s since the class originally had zero place. It features very high personal damage but features no support/utility for the group, and at least prior to this past patch, ele did more, anyways. Might be about the same now.

SA’s a waste of a traitline as well these days, unless you play cancer ghost thief. Daredevil and Acro can provide great cleansing (prior to HoT the primary reason anyone took SA) and are just outright better lines in general. Signet of Agility’s recent buff also makes burst-cleansing no problem, so there’s even less of a dependency than before.

msalakka.4653:

It is by design. The damage is increased by hand so they can keep it in check. Vitality and crit rate aren’t passed on because then you could just gear for them instead of having to take Signet of Illusions and Phantasmal Fury, respectively. It’s a throwback to a time when the trait system provided multiple build options along with having to choose between being tanky and doing damage. Well, I suppose the latter still applies to Mesmer, if no one else.

Ah, the good ol’ days

Reworked weapon skills and shatters; just MW and CoF with F3 as a summon a clone, F4 to make active clones distort. Shatter efficacy/damage nerfed (see below).

Remove most superfluous phantasm abilities/abilities which have damage-dealing phantasms and rework them into actual self-casted weapon skills or abilities which interact with active clones (such as a substitution between the closest clone and the player).

Clones and phantasms no longer deal damage in any form, but mirror all player movements and actions unless a shatter is activated. Upped base coefficients on mesmer weapon skills and complementary weapon-skill abilities to provide damage and utility instead of an over-emphasis/dependency on shatters.

Then rework base weapon damage coefficients to make the mesmer more well-rounded as a damage dealer.

This enables higher personal DPS with no clone dependency, reduces the innate burst/balance concern on the profession in general by decoupling its damage from shatters, makes playing an illusionist/mind games tactics much more viable since clones /clone control become totally player-determined (and allows for very crafty players to really exploit this feature), and provides a much better means to keep up clones via the blur rather than using it as a self-invuln, since it could thus face a reduced cooldown since clones deal no damage.

Basically, the profession turns into an actual illusionist instead of something which just poops out predictable AI used to combo off of.

I’d then nerf stealth access (game-wide, including thief, scrapper, and druid), and change PU to provide a fixed boon order instead of random boons to both enable more skilled play and more counterplay.

It slowed down pretty dramatically for the core specs. There’s more damage negation than ever before, with some professions pushing close to 70% of it. You just don’t notice it because so many elites have damage coefficients/damage amplifiers that push twice or more the damage they dealt prior to the expansion.

Tricare.2946:

I’m not claiming anything, I’m pointing out how there is no counter play to the Boon other than waiting it out.

Corruption isn’t a valid option, otherwise ever class would need access to it.

Like I said, look at stability, it use to be 100% immunity. It’s not anymore because there was no counter to it, other than wait it out.

Every build has access to boon removal, through traits, utilities, weapon skills, and/or sigils. If resistance is shutting your build down and you have no boon removal anywhere to get rid of resistance, this is your problem.

Resistance is a top-prioritized stat in the removal queue, too, so it doesn’t take much.

It’s exactly the same argument as telling people to take cleanses. Sometimes there just isn’t much room in a build to load up on five of them, but people still think condi builds with full tank stats are fair when not considering the inherent requirement of synergy of stats when playing power/damage.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

DeceiverX.8361:

The difference is they need to communicate intent and actively discuss how to improve the game rather than just pushing changes with no interaction.

No, they really don’t “need” to do anything. A lot of us want them to communicate more information more often and in more depth. A lot of us want them to engage in back & forth, about details of the game important to us.

But they can, and have, pushed out changes to their games for, oh, the entire duration of the franchise, without that. And we’ve not always been pleased with the results regardless.

DeceiverX.8361:

Major successful companies take the feedback and in particular, provide justification on why or why not they made or didn’t make changes.

There are plenty of major successful companies that never worry about customer feedback or only about the feedback from a tiny minority. Other companies stick to gathering feedback in very controlled ways, via surveys and focus groups, and the general public never hears a word about it.

---

I’m all for better communication by ANet. In particular, I think they miss out on some low-cost, high benefit types of things (for example: consistently cross-posting on Reddit, the forums, their official blog, their official Twitter, and official Facebook).

But let’s not pretend that they are somehow required to do this by some rules of commerce laid down at Harvard Business School or set in stone by the Alliance of MMO Producers.

tl;dr some of us would like better communication; it’s up to them to decide how important that is.

Unless the company has direct access to mass-market data such that the direct interaction can be bypassed, and then fully utilizes analytic tools to determine what to do based on this data (a la Google), or is in an economic situation where there’s a dependency on their goods/services (grocery stores, military contractors, ISP’s, etc.), that feedback and communication is critical to running a business well today given our inter-connectivity. It’s not an ethical responsibility, but strictly a business one. It’s why companies outsource their support; so long as the job gets done, even if the quality drops, it doesn’t matter as long as customers are at least retained.

They’re not obligated to doing anything; you’re absolutely right. But we’re also not obligated in any way shape or form to care about the success of their company or buy their product, nor should a consumer base anything on a company’s past performance/brand loyalty when making the decision to buying a new product. If they want more money, they’re going to need to improve in this area. It’s just that simple.

Sublimatio.6981:

killing in shroud doesn’t give life force.

It took way too long for this comment to be made.

To verify: Kills only provide LF when outside of shroud. Otherwise it strictly depletes. It’s been this way forever because in chaotic environments with lots of enemies, it’d basically make the necromancer totally immortal via kills constantly bumping LF. This is especially the case for WvW and PvE.

This does not mean LF cannot be gained in Shroud, however, as abilities which create LF still apply, such as the reaper shroud AA.

babazhook.6805:

I think one issue is not so much the ghost thief doing damage from stealth as it is 2 or three combining from stealth to do the same.

Given the player targetted never sees those thieves they tend to assume it just the one thief and on being downed assume it an OP build. The issue is exacerbated by the tendency of the same “player type” to flock together. (Ie certain types just like to troll. Certain types like to spawn camp and so on)

There also a bit of human psychology at play. From the time of the knights who saw peasants with longbows as “cowardly” to modern warfare where grunts in trenches despised enemy snipers, being killed by someone you can not see or that is in hiding has drawn en emotional type reaction. This translates into the gaming world as well where the player just feels a given battle “not fair” unless they can see an enemy. They might well face a non stealth build that meets and beats them 100 to nothing each and every time they meet , yet be killed ONCE in a day by a ghost thief and save all the vitriol and claims of an OP build for that Ghost thief.

The “fun factor” has to be considered here as this is a game after all and while it hard to be able to determine what will frustrate a given player the most given there so many player types , mechanics that make it too frustrating to play for too many can be harmful to the games health as a whole.

Exactly. The argument shouldn’t be about whether or not the build is overpowered. Honestly, there are a lot of factors at play to determine this, and it’s been discussed to death; people are in disagreement as to whether or not it’s OP, suggesting that it inherently isn’t.

The reasoning behind why Ghost thief, and stealth stacking in general, needs to be removed is because it’s just simply not fun to deal with. This is a game, not an actual war where winning carries a much more significant amount of weight/merit. What matters is primarily people having fun and enjoying their time, which ultimately is and should be what matters most to ANet; we’re paying for entertainment, and nothing more. That’s a promise that needs to be delivered on for them to profit and feed their families and so on. Fact is, a large majority of the playerbase actively despises this build not inherently because they think it’s numerically overpowered, but because it’s just not fun.

babazhook.6805:

Straegen.2938:

It would have been a FAR better design to cost init for Backstab then to add more cool downs to the class.

Well I can not agree with the premise that the attacks from Stealth are “free of cost” in any case.

In order to achieve stealth one generally has to use a Utility or use initiative so as to stealth. That means everytime I want to backstab , or sneak attack, or surprise shot or do a hook strike, I have to use INI in some fashion to stealth.

You’re right, though I think it’s more about damage safety; a stealthed thief spamming backstab and so on was basically getting free attempts to land big damage if the opponent popped Aegis.

Actually, I’m pretty sure the sole reason for the ICD was because a good thief could negate Aegis. Explains the BV change to one stack that happened in the same patch, too.

The difference is they need to communicate intent and actively discuss how to improve the game rather than just pushing changes with no interaction.

Major successful companies take the feedback and in particular, provide justification on why or why not they made or didn’t make changes.

The problem with ANet has had a history of providing no reasoning behind why they made any given change. Recent patches have been better, but that’s only one or maybe two of them. People complained because negative changes were released, and the reasoning behind why they were released never ended up seeing the light of day.

Not to mention that open communications – such as coming out and saying “hey, look, here’s an experiment we’re working on that may or may not be released, tell us what you think” – are so much more valuable than silence or just making statements about “this is what we’re currently developing.” One thing implies it may never see the light of day, the other implies it’s greenlit to making its way to production/release.

The other realization to be made is that not everyone will always be happy, and people will complain. No matter where you go in life, there are going to be ungrateful people who kitten on anything they can. Using this as an excuse to stop interaction is absurd when communication is critical to a business’s success.

felincyriac.5981:

I doubt they will have enough time to make a change like this, it’s a struggle already to decide which CD’s to reduce in 4 months.

Lol, I know, right?

Reworks? Yea, we’re way past that, unless it’s got a Guardian involved.

@OP
It’d need to be very carefully balanced. Too much and you end up with necromancers just being immune to burst damage, too little and it ends up worse than now.

I think one of the biggest issues LF has is that it typically takes LF to make LF when PvP’ing, since shroud is a pretty necessary part of staying alive and getting kills. The reason the necros get killed so quickly is because they spawn with no/low LF and get focused because they’re top-priority targets that need to die ASAP since they can instantly turn a fight. The reasoning there is more of a kit/meta design issue than LF itself. You can help it by giving necro some starting LF on respawn, but it won’t solve the being-focused problem. That’s on ANet to nerf boons and conditions, mostly, in order to keep the necro in-line with the prioritization of other builds/professions.

Any change is still unlikely.

TwiceDead.1963:

Straegen.2938:

It would have been a FAR better design to cost init for Backstab then to add more cool downs to the class.

Indeed, it seems like it goes directly against the mechanic Thief is designed for, to add cooldowns to their weapon abilities. Initiative costs make more sense.

It’s also a more balanced approach since it allows the thief to deal with passive blocks and the likes, unlike currently, but can still lock a spamming thief out of his abilities.

But alas, not gonna happen methinks. I’d like to play thief again, but playing a backstab build with the ICD is just frustrating most encounters.

Straegen.2938:

If I had a say, Stealth abilities would replace existing time instead of add on to it. Then reduce the initiative cost of BP. Thieves should have strong stealth access but that also needs counter play. Being able to go dark indefinitely or even for 10s is absurdly difficult to balance.

In this system total amount of stealth outside of BP stays relatively the same but with more risk to the thief and more opportunity for counter play.

This is the best way to approach it, and has been suggested many times in the past as well. Actually, I think all stealthing abilities should work this way, because most people agree that the very notion of stacking stealth is just a bad idea.

They could then remove the reveal when leaving Shadow Refuge and still have it be balanced as an in-and-out ability. A lot of stealth access could subsequently be given a second glance as well. And then permanent stealth no longer exists.

As far as having an easy and cheap OOC stealth tool in general like the OP is suggesting, it’s really not a good idea. Stealth is a powerful effect. It should require some investment and risk to achieve it, and should reward using it at the right times.

Fixing forum bug.

Siphon.8405:

DeceiverX.8361:

Blades Of Fatalis.1279:

OriOri.8724:

Blades Of Fatalis.1279:

Simonoly.4352:

Blades Of Fatalis.1279:

admittedly this is pre patch but… If only this guy had had a light field, maybe then he would of been saved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmfp92Y_UtU&feature=youtu.be

Oh my. Those few times where the stars align and Mistrust goes absolutely mad…

pretty much. its easiest to do actually when theres more people around, more rupts=more confusion. its a great build for yolos but…. its very easily killable and stab does a lot of negative things to builds running mistrust.
however. when it works it works well.

Which, if you think about it, is great balance for the trait and builds that rely on it. It has a clear counter through stab, but if it isn’t countered it can be absolutely devastating. However, that is tempered by the fact that the build itself is relatively easy to kill if you focus it down.

pretty much. The power of the trait is very strong, but honestly i don’t think it needs to be nerfed because as you said its balanced through other methods, being very easy to counter and through the fact that if you trait down that line you lose almost all sources of sustain. The build works very well in decently skilled hands, especially against idiots, but it faulters very quickly against people who know what there doing.

I don’t really think basing any build to be balanced based on a limited-access boon is a good idea.

Basically the same argument as ghost thief being totally fine because people can reveal it. Although even the ghost thief really doesn’t have amazing kill pressure. It’s more or less just a PITA that gets people only when they literally run no bonus health and zero cleanses at all anywhere in their kits.

It may be “balanced” because sometimes it gets shut down, but the game really shouldn’t be Build Wars.

But that’s just me.

IKR. It’s just downright crazy talk to plan out your build and have a strategy!!!

Stinking strategists!

Those stinking strategists can’t out plan my metabattle build, IT’S ON METABATTLE!!!!

The fact that these builds get answered by a consumable item that requires a resource that’s used elsewhere kind of suggests poor design.

It might be a strategy, but it doesn’t change the fact it’s busted. Basically like letting chess players start with whatever kinds of pieces they want anywhere before the game begins.

Plautze.6290:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m not funding a company which does not have my best interests in mind.

… so you are funding no companies at all?

Them trying to profit and them having my best interests in mind do not need to be mutually exclusive. Many people willingly pay for things they like, despite being able to access so much of it for free or much less pretty readily (movies, music/concerts, printed art, etc.).

Successful companies often have their clients’ best interests in mind; Google defines a substantial portion of Internet traffic. Amazon offers cheap goods and greatly discounted fast shipping at their own expense, responsive customer service and quick refunds on goods at no cost, often rarely asking for returns. League of Legends has objectively zero means of P2W and has put in a ton of effort to cultivate their community and crank out quality gameplay over the years. Walmart offers convenience and guaranteed low prices.

Of the lot, Google is the only really sketchy deal, but even then the information they sell is generally pretty non-invasive, and it probably just has to do more with people not even knowing they sell it or simply not caring if they do know.

A lot of these companies could afford to mark up their services, but they don’t, because client approval matters more to them and their revenue long-term.

bluri.2653:

DeceiverX.8361:

Azukas.1426:

Loving the people dont see it so they can’t play against it lines here lol

They don’t, though. There were so many situations in the game where he could have easily been taken down. Others like the mesmer lagging just gave him problems he had no control over. He outright mentioned its weaknesses during the stream. Which D/P could have had utilized. The fact he was able to land so many CnD’s throughout the match, and that he went relatively ignored despite pumping out some pretty serious numbers is a pretty big testament to this. You look at the way all the enemies fought and it pretty much came down to just outright not utilizing their kits properly to deal with him.

I’m not being critical of Sind here – he did very well playing in general because of his proficiency at the profession outside of the realm of D/D. His rotation game is good enough where I don’t think a few struggling fights would have lost them the game, anyways. I’m just stating that just because he won a game with it while not being a pro at the kit doesn’t really suggest anything about the set’s current viability in general based on how the enemies played.

Actually a condi mesmer is no threat to me as a thief unless i play bad, doesn’t matter what weaponset I play, however to kill him 1v1? No obviously that doesn’t work.

Signet buff
Improvisation with Ecto x2
Double stunbreak (compared to me only running blinding powder on DP)

I meant it not as a difficulty in general fighting the mesmer because it was a mesmer but instead because the fact the guy was lagging really hurts D/D since it can’t close gaps like Shadow Shot and even how S/x can, and how it depends on CnD to hit to gain stealth for its primary burst. D/D should probably run without PI in most cases for EA, instead, which makes the matchup even better, since the interrupt potential is pretty low and CnD deals pretty substantial damage as well, and as you said, there are further plenty of ways to deal with such a mesmer.

That depends wildly on build. In the case of Daredevil without SA, it’s pretty much generally safe to say it’s cheaper to use CnD over BP+HS unless Bound is used in terms of raw stealth access, although I don’t think Sind uses it in sPvP since it’s mostly a 1v1 trait and doesn’t yield swiftness access like UC does.

CiS doesn’t really provide that much for x/D in general. It’s an extra layer of safety after the CnD has landed; but what is that really necessary for? Even D/P with BP+HS would need to dodge to avoid subsequent bombs, and you can dodge during/just before the aftercast of CnD and still gain the stealth just fine. Basically, it was a freebie defensive passive which prevented counterplay by AoE/cleave-nuking a D/D thief. I’m actually pretty glad that it’s gone, personally; you can use abilities and react to incoming ones at the same time, so I’d much rather see other elements of the game take a similar approach.

CnD’s issues stem from it being a very risky ability to use relative to its initiative cost because it can’t wait an opponent out in stealth like D/P can, and may trigger passives/requires a hit in melee to achieve, which depending on the timing and circumstances of the fight, can be very difficult to do.

This is why I also don’t advocate unblockable be applied to CnD; skilled blocks and negation of such an animation/setup for backstab should be rewarded, which is why I oppose the existing state of the game more than asking for buffs to OH dagger; if not supplied with so many ways to negate CnD, and in particular, D/D power due to the ICD on backstab having a high impact on whether or not the kit works at any given point in time, there wouldn’t really be a need to buff the skill at all.

The thing about D/D is that it has a place as an initiative-efficient damage dealing set. The problem is that its means of achieving damage have been trivialized via the AA buffs, and through its relatively linear kit which is pretty simple to counter and quite predictable for the most part in PvP environments, all while hinging on the risky nature of CnD. Unlike D/P, the kit interacts poorly with itself and thus struggles to maintain synergy, while it also doesn’t interact well with other kits nor provide options to deal with them; in particular, kits which have a plethora of defenses in general give the set a very difficult time.

It won’t affect wells because wells are on a pulse/combo field which do not get modified by any attack speed bonuses.

It only affects attacks and channels in shroud because any channel you make will get canceled if you enter shroud before it finishes.

It doesn’t matter if they try to generate revenue from their players so long as many people think the game isn’t worth playing for many reasons based on their recent decisions.

Swagger.1459:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’ll pass. This is how you’ll get even more people to quit.

Fix professions and gameplay in general, and I’ll return to my 30-60 bucks a month in gems for aesthetic items.

Otherwise, like many others, I’m just boycotting ANet until the essentials get fixed.

They just communicated, again, that they do not have the resources to fix and improve some “stuff”… We are not getting good “stuff”, like fixing professions and gameplay, until they have the money to do it.

Then let it be their downfall, honestly.

I’m not funding a company which does not have my best interests in mind. I purchased their game, have played it and enjoyed it, and spent money while I was enjoying it. It was marketed as B2P, and that’s what I did. I no longer support ANet as a company due to how massively they’ve messed up repeatedly over and over the past year and a half or so. Many other people agree, or simply left.

I don’t trust ANet to improve the state of the game regardless of how much money they have. They had absolutely massive resources previously. They did nothing to address core issues. They still have competent developers and managers, and the core issues remain. I’ll only regain that trust once they stop catering to everyone so fixated on only getting new content and instead take some time to fix fundamentals like proper businesses do when things start taking a dive.

I’ll pass. This is how you’ll get even more people to quit.

Fix professions and gameplay in general, and I’ll return to my 30-60 bucks a month in gems for aesthetic items.

Otherwise, like many others, I’m just boycotting ANet until the essentials get fixed.

Mesmer also deals damage while stealthed, Ori. Clone and Phantasm attacks do not reveal stealthed mesmers, and scepter clones apply torment on AA. In the frames where it decides to try and drop a bomb, it can just Distort during its bomb for invulnerability while hitting Chronophantasma to keep the clones up. Core isn’t as bad as ghost thief in terms of being able to attack with relative impunity, but it does provide much more damage potential than ghost thief.

In general, stealth-chaining and dealing damage while being immune to damage really need to be cut back on. Gameplay is very passive and all about defenses at this point.

Digikid.7230:

OP here is talking about condi necro in large fights, which has started to be stacked at least in T1 NA due to how strong it is, every fight is turning into which side has more condi necro cancer.

So it’s no different from boonshare, DH flooding, and the burn guard frontline we’ve been seeing for the past year or so. Just a diff profession.

Lots of things need nerfs.

babazhook.6805:

I think the only buff needed is a slightly lower cooldown (40 seconds) and knocking a bit of time off the trigger portion for early use.

Agreed. Since the utility is so niche, it ends up just being a same-or-worse Shadowstep a substantial majority of the time.