Guild Wars 2

That’s the thing – the trait used to be entirely about damage when getting the jump on your enemy. That was all. The entire design of the trait changed, and it honestly nerfed more underpowered builds more and buffed the stronger ones while trivializing play and reducing the impact of decisions.

P/P got buffed the most via unload spamming, nothing else. The aftercast removal on Vital Shot did little to help P/P power and next to nothing for interruption P/P condi. As it is, spamming unload is mathematically the best option P/P has for damage because of the might stacks paired with Lead Attacks. The same is said about Shadow Shot spam, P/W spam, or really any effect on a power kit. Conditions just got buffed (for no legitimate reason) and again, already-spammy/repetitive styles of play got buffed at the expensive of skilled play and initiative management that was once a critical part of the core thief design, nerfing other sets like D/D or builds focused around quicker fights or a plethora of abilities.

Dancing Dagger doing decent damage from a 15% modifier? I’m sorry – what? The skill is conceptually an under-performer and did and still does pitiful damage unless enemies are grouped together – but still, that 15% at-best bonus is not at all worth it, as odds are if you’re capped on LA’s damage and using DD, you’re already in combat, have exchanged blows, and are trying to reset/recover initiative after a disengage. If you’re trying to persist in a fight, a single AA (and especially HS) will out-perform it, anyways, so it’s a waste.

S/D has been least-effected by the change in terms of damage and style adjustments, but not because I think it has to do with tempo or using other skills; S/D always hovered around intermittent and mixed skill use when played well, never keeping full initiative but never dumping it, either. Dump initiative on S/D and you die. Don’t use anything and you also die. It’ll probably maintain around 6-12 stacks or so of LA which is about the same as it would have on the old LA by timing.

In many cases, it’s not a relentless sequence of attacks being maintained. It’s pressing one optimal skill repeatedly and getting rewarded for pressing it over and over. I’ve killed people putting Repeat Skill Use on #3 on D/P (sometimes #2 for trolls), P/P, and S/P, now for sequential Shadow Shots/Unloads/PW’s with no other skill use. That’s spam. And getting rewarded for it and not punished is completely stupid.

Having the stacks not accrue OOC would actually nerf the nerfed builds even more than they already are. The builds which spam one skill in combat (D/P, P/P, S/P, D/D condi) would get strictly more benefit than those which don’t and try to run with a few stacks before a hard engage while maintaining full initiative. It’s another hard nerf to builds focused on the engage and not the sustained fight, which is where the thief is supposed to do well, and is not doing well at the moment because of passive procs/auto-defenses from other classes which inhibit most good engages, anyways.

I think you vastly underestimate how strong a few select abilities in the thief’s weapon set kits are. I run with no utilities and kill people all the time because a few select weapon skills can carry the entire weapon set, utility skills, and the class in general.

Yes, the thief should have the ability for repeated skill use. I agree to that wholeheartedly, because the profession depends on the ability to think quickly and re-use skills on a whim if a threat is posed or opportunity opens, since the thief’s stats are innately lower than other professions’. That doesn’t mean that the thief should be rewarded for pressing the same skill over and over.

And that’s what LA was initially about; it rewards players for conserving initiative until they need it, while playing at a tempo which could help push damage at the cost of a flurry of skills for that one opportunity, or reuse skills for defensive purposes without having an extra damage modifier, which may cause them to miss an opening at full capacity, giving the opponent some leeway on how to play well against the thief, but giving the thief some capacity to determining if and when to wait and land an attack at peak damage or focus on the sustained game.

Kicker.8203:

The amulet system is flawed in that it supposes you have enough health on all classes to chose an amulet without vitality. All low hp classes need to be boosted to medium or ppl must be allowed to better spread out their stats more like in wvw.

The amulet system is flawed because the stats themselves are imbalanced relative to boons, and the lack of customization leads to all-or-nothing builds.

Take a Valkyrie mix into WvW and it’s very competitive because stats are strictly better where boons have less of an impact.

Further, on the thief in particular, most of the class’s damage comes from supplementary scaling effects, not raw coefficients. This means reduced innate stat effectiveness causes reduced results from scaling. The difference between PvP and PvE stats creates an environment which cannot be mathematically balanced.

rennlc.7346:

Simonoly.4352:

Yeah I don’t like the new Lead Attacks. There was some eloquence to maintaining your initiative to obtain the buff, whereas now you just get it by doing what you were going to do anyway. ‘Just attack to do more damage’ is such an uninteresting buff. I’m really not a fan of what Thief is becoming.

Indeed. I miss those little situations of having to choose between whether or not to shadowshot + backstab someone for lower damage and a blind or just go for the kill with a backstab.

Yea. I’m slowly seeing the class being overtaken by unnecessary adjustments/buffs while core aspects of the class which have kept it crippled for so long have gone unaddressed. They’re answering problems with power creep and not with actual solutions in respects to blatantly overpowered aspects of other professions. The thief seems to be pushing emphasis on spammy, unskilled play lately more than anything, especially with the introduction of the Daredevil.

Sir Mad.1092:

Ghotistyx.6942:

I also am a game dev and I know all the code and how it interacts with other code so I know exactly how long this fix should take.

I also know exactly how much they care about thief.

Errr… In that specific case, it should take about 1 min, CTRL+Fing time included…

Pretty sure it was sarcastic.

It should be an easy fix, though. If their engine is made even remotely well, such options should be available directly to developers with no or very little code needed at all, and even if not, it’s just a value to change a leading 4 to 8 in millis.

Could also just be patch notes lying. Maybe it was 8, and QA said it was too good. I can see why, considering it would allow self-stacking 25 might permanently on P/P, which is kind of insane since the coefficient on unload is so high.

I disagree. The skill as it is promotes Skill spam and then AA for more damage. I’ve almost stopped bothering backstabbing since I’ll get more damage just whiffing CnD and hitting my targets with AA, now. For Shadow Shot spam, which was already optimal play for D/P, there is quite literally zero downside doing 333331111111111; it was previously worse than it is now, as you’d get diminishing returns on skill spamming and then also get punished for AA’ing at low initiative due to losing the gains from LA. Now, there’s no downside aside from being out of initiative, and you’re punished for conserving it and not using skills.

Frankly, this kind of effect makes more sense on a warrior than thief; thieves shouldn’t feel obligated to rotate skills or burn cooldowns to gain benefits while in combat for sustained damage; it’s contradictory to the purpose of initiative as a mechanic.

All-weapon-effects to traits like Poisoner (shouldn’t be two e’s) are a little busted on some weapon groups. It’s nice that DA is a condi line now, but the options aren’t really expanded on for power builds. Further, you’ve basically taken all the goodies for condi and consolidated them into a single trait line, reducing the impact of build choices, making overly-defensive builds like DA/Acro/DD extremely strong for really no reason. The line synergized nicely by providing the damage bonus from EW after a steal via Serpent’s Touch and Lotus Poison with benefits of control helpful to keep power non-stealth functioning due to applied weakness and heal cuts. To get just the damage gains, you’d need to get lucky on RNG from crits via CS with Ankle Shots, or would need to pre-engage with a mobility-inducing condition, which against many classes, is very difficult to maintain. Both of these aspects with an unmodified SoP are implicit nerfs to signet build potential.

You took away Hidden Killer from CS, which I fundamentally disagree with here. SA is a defensive line. Shouldn’t be putting the trait which sums of the whole flavor of CS – critting – into a line focused on being hard to kill and difficulty being tracked. HK might have synergy with SA builds, but it’s definitely the CS skill.

Elusive Shadow is just way too strong. Resilience is aimed to cut incoming damage so that burst while the thief is in stealth is partially negated. Straight-up invuln + RoS is way too good defensively, especially since you’ve consolidated damage so much from DA into CS alone.

With Hidden Thief (and most of these suggestions in general), you’ve also gored D/D power entirely in respect to D/P. Gutted. Gone. D/D stands no chance against a D/P player now, and D/P gets buffed and D/D gets nerfed here again. Other classes being in stealth is a pain and bad design, but that’s on other classes to get stealth access reduced or baseline functionality cut as a consequence. We shouldn’t be putting in even more Revealed effects into the game but reducing stealth access and then subsequently Revealed effects. You made a mechanism to stop being revealed in SA, yet you’re pushing for it more, and made a trait line (SA) so powerful with its stealth and reveal access (especially Meld) that it’s a non-option for any power spec, and even arguable for conditions. It’s honestly even better and imho more of a hard requirement than Trickery is now.

2s Daze on SoH is a little overboard. That’s 10% daze uptime on steal alone. Too strong for PvP environments. We should be aiming to reduce CC uptime in this game, not boost it just for the sake of being competitive with clearly overpowered professions.

Mystic forge lower level karma weapons/armor for materials, spend some time gathering the rest (nodes are per-character, so you can bring them all to one area, leave them there and wait for respawns), then do dungeons, fractals, or open world content for silk, and then Craft it.

A big reason why I even take Trickery at all is the damage bonus, which is why I’m upset they nerfed it for any build not playing spam.

I think it’d be better if they just undid the change. It wasn’t necessary at all.

MrPinks.2015:

he lost his Eir

Dunno. One could argue he’s the eir in this situation.

Puck.9612:

elkirin.8534:

I am not sure how to break it to you , so I will shoot straight from the hip;

Maguuma is currently making a heavy Glicko Win…. it appears they are in the right tier.

FA is currently taking a heavy Glicko Loss…. it appears they are in the right tier.

ET is carrying BG to victory, it appears they are in the right tier. (TIC)

Some are happy with the increased numbers, some long for a return to solo roamers facing solo roamers.

IMHO, Anet has done something, I am happy that they have tried something. Without providing an example of how they could do it better, I will live with this system.

Just to add to that, Mag has about 7k kills over DB at the moment and that gap will likely keep growing. Mag is in last place because most of the guilds are having so much fun fighting in EB that they refuse to go PPT in the bl’s. Go read the cancer forum thread on this match up, people are loving it.

Don’t know how they’re having fun. Pretty much boils down to 10-15 man groups camping by spawns ganking solo or duo players and then running away as soon as a few pugs muster, and then repeating the process over and over.

And before you say “get the blob to wipe them” or “get numbers to match them,” no, that doesn’t work. They run away unless their numbers favor enemies 3 : 1.

It’s pretty much been realized that Mag’s precious KDR is the product not of skilled play but instead just simply not fighting when against fair numbers, and continuously picking on random pugs leaving spawn with over-sized “roaming” groups.

I miss fighting FA, even if in small-scale they’d beat our pugs back pretty bad. Way better players there, honestly, and they still played a more respectful game to let people get back into the action.

Encouraged through dumping initiative for gains on Lead Attacks.

Spam builds got buffed, while already-underpowered builds like signets which depended on maintaining high initiative for sustain which came exclusively from skilled play got nerfed.

The change to Lead Attacks is honestly one of the single worst changes ANet could have made. It was totally unnecessary and contrary to what the thief should be about.

It’s just the stacking on TC in particular that’s so bad. Before the mass invasion of guilds from T1, there were only ever queues around 25 deep on a reset only in EBG. Too many people on the server, now. Sad part is there’s nothing TC could do to prevent it.

Just throwing more players into the mix definitely didn’t help, despite the gains being extremely small, as most very-low-tier servers have barely any presence. Still, the 10 people they might be able to muster in EBG does contribute to queues.

D/P needs no love. The rest of the options do.

The Lead Attacks changes only buffed spam play (especially now with a buffed AA which makes wasting init have no real consequence in terms of damage) on a few already overly-efficient abilities and AA finishers, notably, Shadow Shot.

Yes, Unload was buffed with this, but honestly, unload already had huge burst, and now has even more burst with the might stacks, enabling P/P to be the best burst damage the class has. It’s objectively better than backstab and in fact so good it nullifies the purpose in playing CS/signets because Signet use becomes pointless for massive P/P unload damage.

Further, the changes nerfed builds which already were poor performers, like S/D and D/D, which upon conventional engage/core thief already have more initiative than D/P, punishing bursty specs and providing a damage loss for conserving initiative.

I understand that spamming doesn’t replace truly skilled play and initiative management, but there’s little reason to nerf builds which are already suffering, especially D/D power, but cutting its damage upon engage and buffing unskilled play. It simply isn’t good design and isn’t justified.

Honestly, I’m so turned off by this change that I haven’t even touched my beloved thief. It’s the notion of invalidating a style of play and punishing more skilled, calculated play that really bothers me the most about all of the changes in the patch.

In the context of PvE and a measure of DPS – damage output per uninterrupted unit of time – then yes, Marauder is unquestionably the most efficient set for damage : durability for the thief.

Berserker gear does more damage, valkyrie enables superior reliable burst potential/better durability, while soldier’s is just the most efficient on average across all classes in terms of damage : durability ratio (though not for the thief due to our damage modifier access).

Nothing’s changed playstyle-wise for those who abide by the meta which largely consists of spamming 3 on D/P, spamming 3 on D/D condi, and for those who play pistols, spamming 3 for burst damage on unload. Otherwise, the changes to lead attacks have just strictly nerfed everything else.

Lead Attacks always benefits the standard style of play which D/P features which consists of spamming 3, a HS at low health, and then AA’ing the target to death/cleaving downed.

The set most adversely affected by this change is power D/D, since it typically rides higher initiative at any given point in time with fewer worthwhile initiative-consuming abilities.

NuhDah.9812:

if the devs decide to incresed the P/P range for thief to 1200 wouldn’t that be the same as what you said about using a riffle?

Check the proposal in my signature as to what the rifle could bring and how a massively different weapon skill kit can have a profound difference in play style viability.

Buffs aren’t the answer to any profession. Options and breadth-of-capability are.

MadRabbit.3179:

DeceiverX.8361:

Unload getting might is completely stupid and I honestly have no idea who thought this would be a good idea. Again, this is just more 3spam with Lead Attacks synergy. Who’s working on these damage increase changes? They make no sense at all

I disagree. I posted some of the numbers in a seperate thread on my staff DPS testing. Highest rotation I got with staff is 30k. I got 17k under the same conditions using just pistol and unload.; I can probably boost it to 18k if I work in a bound rotation.

Even when I did the tests using solo conditions, pistol and unload with the new might stacks could only get to about half of what staff could.

P/P is still really bad and the might buffs don’t mean anything in a meta group comp. The might stacks just make it less bad than before if we get forced into using ranged combat.

It’s still insane though, because that single change is a big jump in damage for this weapon; doesn’t put it on par though with other weapon sets.

I speak from a sPvP/WvW perspective where two unloads kill most people to begin with.

It was needless. Like I said, it just promotes dumping initiative on the same skill and not using the breadth of skills available to the thief. This itself is bad design in a competitive environment imho.

I’m not saying everything should play like ele or engi – I dislike those ideologies of rotation-based play even more – just that single-button-mashing isn’t a healthy way to play the game.

This balance pass was really inadequate for the most part. Even pro players are cringing at the lack of nerfs to overpowered abilities and just simply stupid changes.

Backstab is a DPS loss.

Lead Attacks change was unwarranted and encourages spammy play followed by 11111111111111 (AKA D/P 3spam builds), and nothing was done for CS builds. Of course, OH dagger continuously ignored.

Unload getting might is completely stupid and I honestly have no idea who thought this would be a good idea. Again, this is just more 3spam with Lead Attacks synergy. Who’s working on these damage increase changes? They make no sense at all.

Recognition of core thief condition weakness is a big step in the right direction, but ultimately implementation kind of shoddy as Mad mentions above; PR and passive procs in general simply don’t work on this class. Acro is still a bad version of Daredevil. Daredevil needs the treatment DH just got; slight shaves at what’s making it over the top compared to core.

Boon strip on LS going back to 2 is huge for those who still hang on to S/D and try to counter the boonspam meta.

I’m very mixed on these changes. ANet is skirting around the real problems of power creep in elite specs by just powercreeping the core professions and will ultimately create more imbalances and unnecessary power. This is especially upheld with the thief because DD and Acro are conceptually the same.

As per the normal, I disagree entirely with Vincent’s post.

Revealed keeps the thief in check. The problem is over-dependence on stealth for a specific set of effects on core thief (condition removal namely), and other classes having such ridiculous stealth access these days while being designed to function optimally out of stealth, making their access strictly better than the thief’s, and then AoE-revealing effects being so easy to acquire where such defenses are overly-punished on the build-level. Cut down other classes, round out the thief’s capabilities more across trait lines to make it function better while not in stealth without simply providing passives or ridiculous sustain, and things start looking good. Simply removing revealed this late in the game is a conceptually misguided attempt at a fix to a problem which really barely even exists in the scope of the identified weakness.

I think Karl knows how to balance PvE to make things useful. That’s all. I think he’s inept for PvP balancing, especially when we’re seeing the Daredevil be so much more mathematically and conceptually superior to the core thief on numerous levels when it comes to PvP encounter analysis. I frankly do not think the Daredevil is even remotely well-designed, as it is redundant, strictly improves the thief, and simply warped an existing style of play to fit a new agenda and level of power of the expansion.

As far as the prospect of skill versus balance and the philosophical question of what that entails, there should not be a profession which is objectively better in “more skilled” hands than any other. Each style of play, a build objective of each profession acting as a subset style of play, should have its strengths and weaknesses, which mechanically, are minor enough to offset a margin of error accounting for player-skill discrepancies, not to any particular class or opposing build, but to entire styles of play or build concepts. In an ideal world, the abstract “skill ceiling” should be equal for all classes and builds, where a win in a given fight should come down to a mixture of where that player stands relative to his opponent to said “ceiling” and the innate advantages/disadvantages of the builds themselves. This may seem unfair and imbalanced, but that is because the notion of a perfectly-balanced game involving such complexity is quite literally impossible, for skill is an abstract concept which cannot be objectively measured. The only way to tell is through attempted data analysis and consumer feedback, which thus invalidates the prospect of ever being able to objectively measure player-driven difficulty, and if attempting to balance the game in doing so, would create a paradigm where high skill = better yields design would always indicate that the performance of a given build/class designation in competitive play is always superior to others assuming equally- or near-equally-skilled players, implying the very definition of the class/build not being balanced.

Yes, all bonuses are added in a multiplicative fashion except for Ferocity bonuses. The stacking of many damage modifiers is why the thief has the capacity to hit so hard, as its base damage is actually relatively low; it just has more access to multiplicatively-stacking modifiers, which enable the damage to grow massively if many are used in conjunction; much more so than just one seemingly large damage modifier.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

AegisFLCL.7623:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That is because you’re not using it as intended.

You suppose to engage (or re-engage) with Shadowstep so when you get loaded with conditions, you can use the return to remove them.

Placing the condi-removal on first activation will have the same problem when Thieves uses it to engage.

You’re just creating a cyclical problem when you’re suppose to instead just use it as intended.

Please spare me the “I’m best thief NA” before you even reply…

What part of me reply you’re quoting? I don’t see anywhere that I even made that claim.

That is flat out not true. First off you’re blowing a long cd stun break when you can engage any number of ways to melee range (bar running staff where this could be considered useful).

That doesn’t change the fact that it was made with the intention to engage and condi-removal on disengage.

Second, Shadowstep is far more useful as a disengaging/repositioning tool.

Then I will argue that you’re blowing a long cd stun break just to reposition when you can reposition any number of ways. You see, your first reasoning debunked your second argument.

No matter which way you put it, on paper or in practice, it will always be more useful to disengage/reposition. And therefor frontloading the condi removal would be a good QoL improvement, especially with the existing meta and not being able to instantly faceroll.

That perception is too narrow. If you get stunned and your target runs away, this is a good time to use SS to break the stun and re-engage, thus if you get loaded with conditions on re-engagement, you can return to remove the conditions.

Besides, Infiltrator’s Signet is a better stun break with a very low cooldown — if you don’t have DD, otherwise Bandit’s Defense is even better.

Conditions can be removed by the right traits on evades or using Tricks.

In a sense, you’re using a very long cd skill just for disengage/repositioning.

Like I said, you’re only creating a cyclical problem.

If anything I think it’d be better to argue removing the condi removal from this skill all together and building it into another utility skill. As the skill exist now the way the condi removal function just seems like it was tacked on because they didn’t know where else to put it.

SS is an obsolete skill that needs to be redesigned. The cd is ridiculous for a utility skill. I agree that this skills should have the cleanse removed but the cooldown needs to be reduced to 15s (same cd as Bandit’s Defense). However making another utility skill that removes conditions is unnecessary and redundant since there’s already many ways to remove conditions.

I was about to agree with you until the end. No way.

The thief has access to good cleansing only on a few builds, notably in D/P DD. Anything else, especially core thief, cleansing is objectively the worst in the game, despite the low health pool.

We don’t need to see D/P with an even safer disengage/reengage pattern. I get this would push emphasis off the shortbow, but the cooldown being anything lower than 50s would make a thief almost impossible to catch up with unless it’s by another thief also running SS, in which case, that’s locking an already high-demand/overused utility into something even more powerful.

Shadowstep doesn’t so much need love in that regard so much as the thief needs better burst condition cleansing options for anything that isn’t Daredevil. Either this comes across the board from multiple trait lines, or potentially a utility which burst cleanses like Cleansing Fire or something along those lines.

OP’s suggestions are ridiculous lol.

Imagine Lead Attacks with 50 initiative and 1000% more damage haha. I’d crit for 300k lol.

The assassination build exists. It’s called signets.

The problem is passive defenses are so overpowered and so abundant, and sPvP stats got nerfed so massively that it doesn’t work anymore.

With really skilled play, it works in WvW.

OP’s almost there. It’s not clones that are the problem. It’s shatters. Innate huge burst as a class mechanic requires costs elsewhere. That’s the problem with why the mesmer’s build diversity is bad from a balance/design perspective.

They could alleviate this by enabling the class to build like the thief in that all of its burst damage/damage potential comes from scaling on offensive traits/trait lines rather than just having huge front-loaded damage on its class mechanic. I.E., pick buffing shatter burst, sustained DPS, or defensive sustain. As it is, mesmers run defensive traits because the offensive specs are next to worthless when they don’t see big damage gains and can’t pump out sustained damage numbers to make building more durable or a more durable style of play really worthwhile outside of condi PU, and even then, it’s more about point control.

This kind of split enables base DPS buffs/clone durability up as to make the class still balanced in PvP formats while not having it 100-0 people on defensive trait specs, and give it the bonus PvE damage it needs solo or as a DPS while not having crazy utility potential as well, enabling more of a “pick a role” style in terms of traits, which ideally is what everyone wants.

Further, the mesmer as an entire concept seems to feature a lot of crazy strong support skills that simply overshadow the rest. AOE haste/alacrity is too good to pass up in PvE, and portal/moa is too good to pass up in PvP, and glamours are too good to pass up in WvW. It’s not as bad as the thief where utility skill picks are limited to four options in all formats, but still, the diversity within builds could see boosts. This much I’m not sure how to fix without simply nerfing and blurring the effects of their utilities, but that’s a slippery slope for balance…

I excuse Kazo for the most part as they were originally from TC and were playing on the server for a few weeks before the mass transfers in. The others, though, shouldn’t have had a say in the matter.

TC didn’t need help winning. We largely wanted to stay in T2 away from the cesspool that T1 is and keep a casual/fun approach to WvW.

If you seriously think this “alliance” is carrying TC, you’re a fool. I took this screenshot over a month ago when everyone decided to actually PPT that week due to trash talk by DB. You’ll notice TORK and BP both in the screenshot as proof this was some time ago.

Sad truth is the T1 transfers/stackers are just fun-suckers who killed our tier because they recognize now that they screwed themselves over by forcing YB to T1 despite the repeated warnings in the past that it would hurt T1 and the rest of WvW.

Josh XT.6053:

nosleepdemon.1368:

Josh XT.6053:

John Smith.4610:

Things YOU know as facts:
1. I can buy unlimited items off the Tp without any server limitations- FALSE
2. I can pick up unlimited items into my inventory from the TP without any server limitations – FALSE
3. I can set arbitrary buy order prices at unlimited speed without server limitations. – FALSE
4. Doing any of these things in reverse (selling) causes an error to pop up – what?
Things devs have stated as facts in the past:
-series of random ad hominems that clearly make your points more valid…right?

Just because you don’t see the technical implementation of some aspects of the systems doesn’t mean it’s magic.

Doesn’t really answer any questions. I know as a fact that software development isn’t magic, I’ve been doing it for 20 years. The limitations are generally set by hardware or network connections. If those are your limitations – upgrade. See NCSoft earnings report and tell me how this isn’t possible.

I don’t really know why you’re being defensive about it, lets try to be constructive and think about what can be done. Why are other games not limited in the way that you are? Maybe utilize your community who may just have some ideas you missed.

I pegged you for a dba or sql monkey until I read about your theory that limitations in software engineering are generally either hardware or network based. Now I can only assume you are in fact, not a programmer at all.

Just saw your reply, made me laugh a little.

Now, if you are a programmer – you might just be a programmer that is stuck on one programming language if you don’t believe me. Programming in general is limited only by hardware and the mind of the person writing the code. Now I may not be able to do something in PHP that I can do in C#, that is just because different languages are better at certain things than others. But programming is always only limited by hardware. Unless of course the programmer behind the screen doesn’t know how to do something, then its limited by user and hardware.

Source: 20 years programming experience between 14 different programming languages on both Windows and Linux platforms.

While you’re technically correct, an algorithm with low efficiency and subsequently “bad” performance (in the eyes of a user) cannot simply just have blame shifted to lack of hardware support. You should know well about NP-hard problems and the complexity of concurrent systems, which, while solvable and may have ways to tune and tweak performance gains, may not simply have good solutions which hardware can make up the gap. This is especially exacerbated with OS/scheduler involvement disabling processes in potential multi-core systems.

That said, I’m not sure if it’s fair for John to say that the solutions to fix the problem are known. If the solutions are truthfully known, then implementing the fix would not be difficult. There’s a substantial difference between knowing that a solution/potential improvement exists and knowing the solution. Typically, such lack of priority or inattentiveness is the result of the former being true while the latter not being true.

More logical just to see the overpowered builds which stack permanent boons nerfed (Scrapper/Ele in particular) which massively inflate their stats via boon access nerfs themselves versus means of preventing boon building which affects all classes substantially.

Because I can make several sets of ascended weapons for a lower cost and more realistic materials grind. I dislike everything legendaries stand for, frankly.

I’d rather keep the skins overdone and ridiculous as they are on the basis that I’m completely content with keeping what I find as the good skins more affordable.

morrolan.9608:

style.6173:

Who cares the reason? All that matters is that people on all 3 servers are playing again, and that makes it fun.

And when it wears off WvW as a whole is left worse off just as happened with the stacking of YB.

Correct. Further, the sole reason I came to TC over other servers several months ago was because it wasn’t the BS of T1. I’d sooner drop down to T4 or below.

Ricky.4706:

ya, they have some of the grimiest tactics, obnoxious attitudes, and odious techniques i’ve seen in game

…

like it or not, whether anyone is willing to admit it or not, mag’s form of foul play brings meaning to winning a wvw match.

Enough to harass a guildmember of mine to the point of breaking her and quitting the game and MMO play in general.

Yup. Real sportsman-like these folks are.

I moved away from the T3 matchups for the sole reason the players on mag are the most disgraceful excuse for a community I’ve seen in gaming, just because of how they handle strangers. I’ve seen some things – especially having worked support for a game which legally allowed trash talk, scamming, and espionage – and even those players in an open-PK world weren’t so awful.

They don’t provide meaning for WvW. They take it way over the line to a point of creating an incentive for not playing.

We didn’t want them. Things were fine as they were. T1 just wants to not be fighting against the YB monster they created.

TC was fun with a big casual WvW scene and just big enough for action with no queues. Now it’s got queues everywhere 24/7.

All the servers in T2 are being played like T1 and it’s this exact manipulation ideology which has made for stale matchups and mass transfers leading people away from WvW to begin with.

TC has always had the numbers/capacity to push to T1 but strictly speaking was pretty content with T2 seeing as the fights with its opposing servers (before FA’s collapse) were very fair with close matchups by the end of the week. It made WvW fun.

Now I log in, look at the 50-100 man queues in NA every night, and just log out.

Frankly, these are the sole reason my elite spec suggestion has a low coefficient on the rifle. Glad to see people realizing how good these sigils are in the right build.

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Or have it shoot biceps so people really get how masculine it is now.

As hilarious as this would be, people would get offended by “shooting masculinity” at people, so it’s unfortunately very unlikely, despite being a hilarious pun and counterpart troll to the dreamer (though I would feel bad for shortbow owners at that point having at least two troll legendaries).

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

But until then, I would love another mini skirt or Daisy Duke shorts for summer, considering how some people complain about “objectification”, I doubt I will get it. I belong to an all female GW2 group with thousands of members (close to 4k of us), and many many of us like revealing armor, so don’t blame that on female players, it is a vocal minority that are offended by that.

I’ve found a lot of the criticism comes from the male population when it comes to this topics in western games. Everyone’s too afraid about being politically correct or not offensive on other peoples’ behalf such that in many instances proponents have collectively turned themselves into more-easily-offended versions of the groups they’re trying to assist. The biggest case in GW2 recently being the bunny-ears discussion about the affiliations to “adult entertainment”; however, I found on server-teamspeak several males complained about the ridiculousness of the attire, while a majority of people with them and excited about the sale were female, defending the notion of the silliness and whimsy that would be “[adult trademark name] combat bunnies.”

Eastern games definitely have their fair share of issues with needless amounts of sex appeal, but including revealing attire options isn’t something everyone should freak out over objectification for. That’s not to say it isn’t an issue or that everyone should be complacent, but more options for everyone are always better imho. We’re in a place of fantasy and real-life anonymity. If a girl wants to dress her character up sexy-like, she shouldn’t be flogged for inexcusable behavior, and if a guy wants to create a female character and dress her up sexy-like, that’s his prerogative which he shouldn’t feel obligated to justify without needing to feel like a scumbag objectifying women, and the same applies in vice versa; I know of quite a few females who are quite fond of the steamy appearances of Lord Farren(heit).

In this game, I run around with a sword bigger than I am cleaving in half pretty much everything that I pass by. As have people playing fantasy games since the 1970’s. We haven’t seen any increases in greatsword-based, game-induced violence. There’s little reason to believe the things we see and do in games should be what we aspire to see and do in the real world. As long as people can make that distinction, we might as well all be entitled to our own visions of fun. If someone else’s existence in skimpy armors upsets someone, they have the capacity to turn all models into standard ones. Otherwise, let people be people, because that’s the truest representation of the real world.

TL;DR: More diversity, skimpy, unrealistic, or not, because options are always better than none.

“Why isn’t my iPod mini worth $300? It’s a new definition of sleek in 2006!

Never mind the ten years I’ve had it for. Nobody should be able to get one for anything less than what I initially paid."

DiogoSilva.7089:

I prefer FF14’s overdesigned gear because, at the very least, it still manages to be somewhat stylish. I mean, a Dragoon will always look agile, intimidating and kitten, even if you dislike the unrealistic and exaggerated art style. In comparison, GW2 makes heavy armorers downright chubby, fat or just laughable.

It might not have been the most… differing comparison, but I do feel that, considering that both games go for a similar gear art style, FF14 does it better. (I’m not making any comments about that game’s wardrobe or its systems, however. It is, ultimately, a vertical-progression game while GW2 is not.)

If you look at Mistward (revenant’s) gear, it’s a good set. It’s as unrealistic and overstyled as any other, but it does its job well. It looks cool, it looks strong, it looks epic. But then you have other hot gear like bladed and leyline, which are based on interesting concepts but are entirely wasted by ridiculous design, even within the standards of over-stylized art.

That’s just your opinion of “cool,” quote from another post above.

Frankly, while I do believe there is room for more diversity within the armor tier types (more conservative light armors for scholars, more revealing heavy for that barbarian look, and anything non-trenchcoat for medium), I think individually most of the armors themselves look fantastic here. There are few that might be overdone on some armor tier types, but for some people, that’s “cool.”

Just as how some people really love drab appearances to simulate realism. I know several people who are particularly fond of the starting gear or low-level equipment, often dying them various shades of browns, blacks, off-whites, etc. because they prefer the look of the weathered adventurer. To each his own.

Kinda why I don’t understand the OP. The design is good. The art is good. It’s just a matter of there not being a lot of diversity within tiers that a lot of people have issue, because to them, the “cool” looks exists but appears on another armor weight/profession instead of the one they’re using.

Lights/heavies would gladly take trenchcoats from mediums, just as medium players would gladly take more heavily-armored gear and more cloth-like options, etc.

The reason I started and continue to play this game is because it lacked a trinity. Raids are changing that perception quickly, and I absolutely have my fears for the future.

If things become solely role/class-specific I will gladly jump ship.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Ogre.3124:

Ricky.4706:

Invulnerable, Evade, Block., Block, Block.

I was seeing that on people who weren’t in downed states, didn’t come up from downed states either, over and over …I’ve never seen anything like it before…is this a new feature ? and if so, what’s the build that causes this god mode ?

they were constantly going invulnerable. and I mean lots of people were going invulnerable. Not just one profession.

If you’re talking about at Maguuma’s spawncamping of DH (by your other posts you are) this was me doing this. Was using our turtle banner off of respawn which gives a spammable block bubble, a 4 skill which slows your skills (gives us resistance), a 3 skill which gives aoe invulnerable (only 3-4 seconds), and my favorite the 5 skill which knocks back your entire zerg for 4-5k damage.

Typically you want to focus fire anyone holding either a centaur or turtle banner. Should notice me pretty easily as I sit in the big green block bubble which I generate all the time. Warrior with the green/red scarf, come get me plz

So there also was a banner in all this orgy of sieges, cheese and overblobbing? Thinking back on the the 2 years I’ve spent on Mag make me feel shameful when I see you behave from the other side of the mirror this week… so sad…

It’s why I transferred down again after my guild helped push a server to T3 some time ago. The spawncamp scumbaggery and general attitude/whispers coming from Mag players was so atrocious that it simply made several members no longer have an interest in playing.

They pride themselves in their fights and they have some good players, but many are border-line narcissistic sociopaths .

Or mesmer comps. Not uncommon to find scumbag guilds running parties of five mesmers for mass chaining of distortions/blur.

This is just the general direction of PvP since HoT, though; passive procs, overuse of blocks an invulns, and overloads of CC have trivialized most of the PvP in this game to become a battle of cheese.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

In all seriousness though, thanks for bringing this up. I’d been meaning to fix this for a while, but it fell off my radar in light of higher priority issues.

Good news: This is now fixed.
Bad news?: This is fixed in the build where we disable Desert BL and bring back Alpine BL

• DBL Camps: Reduced the number of base guards from 4 to 3.
• DBL Camps: Base guards are now a combination of both Scout and Guard NPCs.
• DBL Camps: Guards have been moved inside the capture circle.

All I’m seeing here is good news for the most part. Though still, tactivators. :s

Thanks for your involvement, on this, though. While I understand the “kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t” mentality or general potential frustration, it’s honestly great to have that exposed to people posting. Exposing logically the difficulty of development intents or contradictory requests gives people some insight on why things are as they are and in the end gets people to back off from criticism.

Throwing humor in the mix is also great so long as (as demonstrated) the issues do get recognized as they are.

Flat cooldown reduction on steal by 20% and then removing it from SoH paired with preparedness baseline would remove the need for Trickery. This enables SA to be used instead of trickery for defensive reasons/condition cleansing while maintaining sustained initiative regen via Rejuv.

Put fury-on-steal in CS for Unrelenting with a 8s duration for uptime preservation and you’ve got yourself a buffed CS line which can function without the need for awkward procs and effectively override the function of ToTC, enabling builds like DA/CS/SA while not buffing DA/Tr/DD.

CutesySylveon.8290:

I also disagree that thief can’t 1v1. While I play WvW and not sPvP, the only classes I have trouble with are trapper DH and scrapper, a good rev running retribution is a very serious pain, but they’re beatable. DH being the obvious counter to thief and traps melting you the moment you get caught, and scrapper can laugh at my burst and heal it off, or go mini sized twice to buy enough time for his cd’s to finish. Power rev is no issue without retribution; all the free stab means you can’t properly interupt and when you do you just get taunted from Eye for an Eye, weakness seems to be always on you and all the endurance just means more missed bursts and more stab. Druids are interupt bait as well as eles, warriors melt when the endure pains end and mesmers are doable, albeit annoying. Necro is thief bait, pure and simple. Not saying all is well in the thief world, but we aren’t worthless.

Thief is astronomically better in WvW than sPvP because of how the class gets is performance due to scaling versus raw stat values, and how damage in sPvP is cut by almost 30% for the thief relative to other professions, which is also about 40% lower than in WvW baseline.

The state of balance in WvW, aside from a few very obviously overpowered builds, is much better than it is in sPvP.

If it’s unintentional clearly ANet missed it and didn’t do much playtesting. You can actually skip all of the guards with a stealth set like D/P and just kill the lord.

There’s a lot of hate towards people who run tryhard builds in groups like parties of five PU condi mesmers/tank tempests who strictly just attack individual players running back to another objective, but do not flip anything themselves.

Yesterday, for example, an enemy server had a guild group of eight PU condi mesmers camping between our home keep and a camp they captured, ganking any player or small group (less than 4) running towards the camp. They laid no siege elsewhere for towers, and had many of their third’s towers captured and not defended.

You’d drop out of the keep, head to the camp, and take 60 stacks of confusion and infinite CC locking. Stunbreaking or even using a condi cleanse would kill you.

Brought five or six people to fight them, and they just ran away and hid in stealth. Friendlies dispersed after taking the camp.

Five minutes later, they’re back to the same thing. This went on for several hours.

They’re not playing for objectives/PPT to justify a gank.
They’re not actually looking for fights or small group skirmishes.
They’re not actually interested in a fair fight or a fun one.

It’s those types of “roamers” who I have absolutely no respect for.

jrambo.8467:

What’s ridiculous is this alliance of guilds is ruining t2. They made it so unbalanced with fa and db not being able to touch their coverage combined. I don’t understand t1 guilds leaving kitten come to t2 to raise a server to t1. Just stay on t1. Thanks for ruining t2 with your t1 crap

Happened because nobody likes fighting YB.

I said this before when I was in T6 against YB before they got stacked and people were joking about elevating them to T1: If you raise YB to T1, there will be massive consequences by the very nature of how they play in the format. Those are beginning to emerge with YB not being able to be removed from their position.

And here we are. Some are fleeing for better fights (which DB/TC has provided), some are probably trying to dump the next potential contender into oblivion with a failed attempt/troll push to T1 with a mass exodus. T1 players should have minded their own business, and frankly, based on a lot of people I’ve talked to about the ordeal trying to figure out what’s going on, people would have preferred it if we could have kept them out.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Yes.

That said, we’ll be increasing the cooldowns on all tactics by 5-10 minutes. Also, once the scribing costs come down, as part of the april build, we can start looking at rebalancing their actual effects as well.

5-10 minutes frankly means very little. The effects of having a banner for just a single fight or offense can frankly set the tone for the rest of the week.

Can they please just be removed entirely? I understand that content featured and produced in HoT doesn’t want to be redacted for PR reasons, but in all honesty, banners are really just an objectively bad addition to the game for numerous mechanical reasons, which ultimately and individually tie back to production costs/the systematic removal of small/community guild effectiveness in WvW and an over-emphasis on massive guilds dominating the WvW scene, which ties back to population concerns and server stacking, all of which are fundamental problems in the format which supposedly are trying to be addressed.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Liston.9708:

TC is now the stacked server. The alliance of guilds that went YB to push t1 now reside there, coming from bg/Jq/YB – they must know something about what is coming or why pay to transfer at this point…… Which of course leads to what is worse – not knowing what is coming or only SOME people knowing what is coming……

They have no clue. You are giving those egomaniacs too much credit. They want TC to come up and JQ or BG to fall. That is all

I want TC to go up too – YB and TC on the same tier? 2 siege humping servers that run from fights? Should be Exciting……

A lot of TC players are every upset by the notion and don’t want the “help”. We’ve already lost several guilds just from this, and it is expected the incoming stacking is intended to cause the server to rise to T1 and then immediately fail it, letting it fail completely.

Many players are not interested in T1, especially fighting YB. I joined for middle-of-the-pack action and good coverage for T2 which is what I got for the past several months. I know if it pushes to T1 I’ll certainly also be abandoning ship if the push efforts are legitimate. If not, and the abandonment does happen, I’ll stick around for the non-T1 play I came to the server for.

Game programmers do not do design at all. I assure you of this. Game designers and active game developers, however, must know some code in order to make simple scripts to interface with things like animations and frameworks designed by the programmers.

ANet uses metrics. Actually, I believe the lack of balance is because of overuse of analytical data, and too little mathematical application use for simulation for basis for development.

OP keeps referencing design which favors trinity-style play under the guise of concept-invalidation. Too much power creep and bad design ideology of letting the same builds get everything (tempest, rev, scrapper, condi reaper) through fixed-bonus effects and instead not modifiers to amplify builds creates these environments, not the capacity for each class to deviate.

The game isn’t balanced because of a multitude of reworks which holistically removed the skill ceiling from the game via passive effects, as well as disregard for stat integrity through sweeping changes made to stats and the math behind balance not being constantly verified with each adjustment.

I worked for a game company that did a merge of six servers to two, and added a new server for people looking for a fresh start. They all had massive (expected) spikes in activity per server initially. After six months, populations on each server were the same as they were before the merge. And this was a game in which transferring wasn’t allowed and the community voted for who to get paired with (there was no inter-server conflict, either, so this was strictly just a population boost). Two years later, they merged the new and the old again, because the population across all three never improved.

Merging servers fixes only symptoms of the greater problem. I know people want improved numbers, but merges typically don’t do anything except help the immediate future, and often make the extended future worse. There’s no reason to merge until after these problems get fixed, however, because the populations are still almost guaranteed to die down as a result.

Yikes. Feel bad for T7 folks.