Did some testing. Version 2.1.0 up.
Major changes include a general balance and polish subsection and substantial adjustments to Noxious Fumes poison stack application.
There really isn’t a way to beat them if they know how to play. After some practice you’ll get used to what kills you (typically trap damage and True shot), and it’s really just a matter of not getting hit by these or mitigating them as much as possible while forcing cooldowns. If they royally screw up, you have a chance to punish them if their traps are off cooldown, but otherwise you’re pretty much SOL as there’s no real way for a thief to counter a DH. You effectively require Daredevil for this. Core thief stands even less of a chance due to reduced evasion spam.
(Post to fix the blank page forum bug)
Even HUNT was TC-native before going to FA, and according to Celsith herself she was sick of the attitude and simply wanted to return to her home server for the community.
Sick of what attitude? The guilds that ran in EBG that HUNT hung around quit the game for BDO and The Division. I’d rather Celsith speak for herself here.
Going by what she said in teamspeak. If you can convince her to post here, sure. Otherwise whisper her. I’m not going to open up a can of worms in public because it’s not my guild, and not my personal politics. My point was to convey that the notion of TC being this huge bandwagon server for tons of guilds to megablob T2 is just ridiculous based on first-hand accounts of the reasoning from the only guild I do know transferred.
TORK only uses siege or runs – they don’t fight and CERN prefers taking BL’s that aren’t manned, so they don’t like to fight either – Disco of CERN will fight, the other CERN commanders not so much.
So what you’re saying is that when there are fourteen superior AC’s and four shield gens in a tower we’re trying to take, we should just sit under AC fire and PvDoor like good zerglings.
I could understand FA being upset about our use of siege as it’s often overkill for their number of players (FA plays well when they are around to play, though a lot of their roamers are really terribly rude people), but seriously, DB during NA prime is almost as bad as Yak’s Bend, having fought YB for several months just before they got stacked for T1 back when I was in the middle/low tiers. Oddly enough, I do believe this is when I was playing on Dragonbrand along with EDGE and BETA and BP. Seeing as EDGE kicked me for playing a ranger (then their guild fell apart when they moved to T1 and got absolutely destroyed because certain people in the guild were idiots and thought they were way better than they were), and BP and the rest went to HoD briefly (BP now on TC), I went to greener pastures to DH and then SF to get some better mid-tier fights and roaming with my guild. With my guild quitting on HoT and the mass departure of players from SF (I was literally the only player in SF’s WvW at one point during my time of play, with almost 60% contribution to their server score), I PM’ed Grim about where he was, and was introduced to TC. None of the raiding guilds on DB are native. Claims about being upset with transfers is hypocritical when the server is effectively the result of people jumping on the “Dragonwagon” – a term coined when DB was getting transfers such as EDGE and a few other guilds by DB-native players when I joined and the server pushed to T3 before its collapse some time ago.
The overbearing presence is really just at certain times. About a week ago, TC was outnumbered in EBG and both enemy and home BL’s. Most of the time I log in not on NA prime, there isn’t a commander anywhere.
I can’t speak for OCX timezones, but as far as NA goes, I haven’t seen any new guilds from other servers except for HUNT (again, a loss for FA). Some random on DB was raging at me a few days ago in whisper chat saying that DB was going to give up for a few weeks to send TC to T1/“gl in T1 lol” due to our mass purchase of guilds (seriously I don’t know where this rumor is coming from) in order to dominate T2 and that this was the first time in a while they’ve taken losses due to our “ridiculous map queue zergs.”
I just don’t understand why people can’t be civil about this whole ordeal. Even HUNT was TC-native before going to FA, and according to Celsith herself she was sick of the attitude and simply wanted to return to her home server for the community. This WAS a T1 server after all. Expecting it not to have a substantial playerbase or appeal (as it has way fewer people than T1 servers so queues are tiny, but still tons of action) is kind of ridiculous. Particularly when T1 is stale and people are complaining YB doesn’t bring any fights, and that T2 is/was a very competitive matchup.
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I think I’ll draw up a map with possible routes to debunk this ‘funneling’ claim, since it comes up so often. Give me a few minutes…
edit: This map shows many of the routes, though others (like the above ground route over firekeep) are missing. It should be enough, though. http://www.gw2wvw.net/image/desert-borderlands-route-map
…
Why is keep positioning so important to roamers? Why does increasing the distance between them deal some fatal blow to a roaming party? After all, the camps/towers aren’t further apart, so your statement hinges on some insurmountable obstacle that stems from keep positioning. Saying they’re ‘huge layouts,’ ‘unfriendly,’ and ’don’t work’ doesn’t cut it.
Again I reference my earlier post about defense. Roaming isn’t entirely offense-oriented. Most of it is running defensively and countering opposing groups. The keeps are really unfriendly to small groups of defenders due to their size and complexity and non-visible or discrete nooks and crannies which can siege the keeps, and due to the distances involved, make jumping out of the keeps fairly dangerous. Keeps are a huge part of roaming. If you’re not diverting the attention of your enemies by tapping keeps and then crossing the map ASAP to hit an objective elsewhere, you’re not functional in higher tiers. Period. It’s honestly not the auto-upgrades which killed defenders. EBG has more small-group defenders than ever before due to the prospect of defense being more affordable and not requiring permissions on which upgrades to take based on the tag running. They just upgrade, and upgrade faster, enabling more defensive/offensive siege to be used to give a reason to stay in the towers, and because of the faster upgrade process, require more frequent offenses to take structures, again, be it from roaming groups or the primary zerg. The claims about auto-upgrades killing WvW defense are completely untrue coming from a defender. Waiting on dolyaks to press a button is no more interactive than waiting on dolyaks to build an AC, cata, or treb. It reduces the frustrating of dealing with supply trolls/ignorant people who take siege when upgrading major objectives, too. It gives defensive players MORE power than before, not from executive decisions but from how well-fortified a structure will be come the enemy blob to take it in terms of being able to hold them off. Stronger or weaker walls won’t do anything if you’re outnumbered. Having AC’s/ballis/catas built and supply there for disablers while reinforcements come will. And frantically running around trying to hold off a blob is much more interactive than simply waiting for your own one to come to fight while upgraded walls do the work of defense since that’s where all the supply went.
Did roaming groups really attack towers on Alpine with the hope that people would come to defend them? Wasn’kitten more often, trying to ninja cap before anyone showed up?
This one I give you credit. Defenders leaving didn’t kill roaming groups due to a lack of fights. The funneling that occurs on the paths themselves in the Desert BL’s did, and simply, the perpetuating machine of nobody at all there kind of defeated the purpose in general. If you look at the map, it’s very path-focused. Yes, traversal times are not high. The problem is that these assume one runs on specific paths. These increase the likelihood of conflict with effectively no room to run away, and often, numbers aren’t even. Since this made running around the map in general more difficult (especially with barricades as those take several minutes to kill if by one’s self normally), fewer people were interested in running in the maps, and since the emphasis on chokes and fixed-paths pretty much always favored a blob/main zerg with bigger numbers, should conflict arise with increased conflict likelihood, less people in general were to be on the maps. With less people and no real threats on the maps, fewer objectives flip, and since fewer objectives flip, there’s little reason to PPT to attack or defend for small groups.
A meta is now settling where blobs are pushing BL’s for PPT when desired, ktraining the whole thing. Since the map layout is again more forgiving to those with higher numbers and paths are largely preset, defensive/PPT-minded small groups have limited opportunity to defend or flip objectives without being encountered at common intersections/chokes.
It was in the podcast when they were previewing the June 23rd patch. It was when Robert Gee was explaining why the Necromancer traits for things like Path of Corruption and Dhuumfire say Shroud Skill X instead of the name of the skill, that way as the introduce new Elite specs they don’t have to change the core traits. They could change the “on steal” part but it’s pretty unlikely they would do that since he said they did that because they don’t want to change core traits to suit elite specs.
I recall them announcing how they were handling the change, and yes, it was a way to universalize the traits and descriptions. The same treatment could be done here, which is why I’m not sure what you’re arguing about; none of the traits need mechanical changes for the Deadeye.
Tooltip updates are really easy and are updated often anyways for better clarity. I doubt this issue would be a problem. The only trait “necessary” to change would be Quick Pockets to give it an ICD as the swapping of SHF would be frequent, and on core thief, it’s impossible to swap weapons more than once every 10 seconds, anyways, so having it have a cooldown of ten seconds would enable the effects to be gained once every few transforms rather than enabling normal reveal → Improvisation + SHF + Quick Pockets → Exit SHF → Charge + SHF again due to no cooldown on SHF from improvisation fill an entire initiative bar from 0. It’s not really an important thing to do with the Deadeye itself, but a preemptive balance call on the core class which changes nothing about the core skill/trait itself, but just adjusts functionality so that this combination of traits isn’t overpowered. Basically, it reduces the need for having something launch as OP and then need to be hotfixed.
The talks about Shadow Shot and potentially-nerfable core skills and traits are more generic and not as applicable. You’re certainly right that I shouldn’t expect these or depend on them, and should work on improving design to not need to even look at core abilities as potentially overpowered. That said, Shadow Shot is widely-regarded as being overpowered, and the math backs up that claim pretty readily, and even not in the context of Deadeye, I genuinely would like to see the ability cut down a bit. But that’s another thread/discussion.
Also, you might think of how to do it similar to Celestial Avatar, maybe have some sort of bar that builds up.
The thing about SHF is that it isn’t really meant to be a tool used to disengage or transform mid-combat after a brief period of hard engage and burning initiative. SHF is meant to be about committing to a fight but giving the thief a usable toolkit to have while revealed, either by itself or by an enemy, or down on initiative, with Charge being used as an engage tool just as Steal, only that it enables SHF right off the bat, or enables a Deadeye to refill his initiative after engaging a foe to continue fighting, but not having access to stealth to disengage very well. It’s meant to have frequent use and not depend on landing substantial hits or being hit a lot, since the class doesn’t do well with either. Transform may warrant a higher cooldown, kitten is very low and makes Improvisation a trait choice not really worth warranting in most builds. That said, not every single core trait will align perfectly with every elite specialization, so I’d have to run some tests on making that adjustment to call it fair to builds not running the trait.
Thanks for the input nonetheless.
My response was simply for him to remove all of his armor and equip a level 0 white weapon and enter AC solo. He asked why he would waste his time. Obviously he wasn’t genuinely interested in the hard content.
This is remarkably astute. You’ve pinned down exactly what hardcore means, in reverse. Because that’s how hardcore-specific content is created, except instead of making the player less capable, they make the enemies more capable.
I love it!
Yet there are many people who love the difficulty of a challenge, such as a number of my real life friends who enjoy setting arbitrarily-difficult tasks to perform in video games, one of which being playing Dark Souls with no armor, bonfires, and no HUD. Some of them are now playing through the franchise now with four players on a single controller in what is a disjoint clusterkitten. It’s the same game they’ve played. The AI is nothing impressive or particularly demanding, either, especially for veterans of the series.
Frankly, if people want to have epic encounters against difficult AI’s with complex mechanics and intricate movesets with a high skill cap at the highest echelon of gear and play… they’re largely in the wrong genre of game, or again, are not doing it any more for the sake of a challenge but simply want a more difficult game, which is not a reasonable quest for this genre, especially when casual players account for a bulk majority of sales and drive profits.
Edit: Also the dude talking about defensive stats not being used in roaming and glass being standard made me check the date on the post, thought it was from a year ago or something.
A year ago everything was dire perplex, mostly on P/D thief. Big reversions back to glass with people having so much innate defense now, though, both due to a combination of not needing to build defensive stats and needing the damage to simply kill people due to the craziness of defenses from elite specs. Particularly scrapper, DH, and Daredevil, with a lot of players also running railgun druid and tons pushing Fresh Air tempest and GF war with double passive defenses. Though DD’s once caught still melt faster than butter.
(Fixing forum bug post)
Edit: As a side note, Shadow does bring up a point about Skirmish potentially doing what Daredevil does a little too well. I think Ink Body being a minor trait may need to be examined further, and I may remove the immobilize cleanse component from it as to still give Daredevil a prominent position over the Deadeye at simply being that much more difficult to lock down. Tomorrow I plan to do a little bit more testing, and I’ll inspect this issue a little more in depth. Please discuss this adjustment, and whether or not you think it may be a good or bad change overall in fairness to the DD and power level of the DE.
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Interesting perspective. I’ll look around to see if anywhere they explicitly state that they will not change the current activation of skills to a different mechanic. If you have the source, please link it.
Additions are cool and all, but they should never be on the class-mechanic level. I’ve discussed the idea on the mesmer forums extensively and done the math to demonstrate why if the mesmer wants a DPS spec, shatters need to be removed as a consequence for the integrity of balance. Otherwise it’s never-ending power creep, and honestly, that’s objectively bad game design to follow. That’s why the DE replaces steal; having access to both just gives too much to the DE over core thief. The class mechanics haven’t totally changed, either; initiative still remains as the primary resource unique to the thief, and the DE pushes initiative regeneration much more over core thief.
Simply, the “on steal” wording could be changed to reflect the universality of applying it to Stygian Charge, either as how the necromancer traits were changed (as they already did this), or through dynamic tooltip modifications which change the text via a getSkillName() (or something similar to the implicit return of said method that exists in the current API) method call for the skill name for whatever skills f1 and f2 are on the thief. I don’t see any technical or design issues preventing this from being possible or even disagreeable. Unless I’m misunderstanding something, I’m not really sure what you’re arguing.
Skirmish is on a cooldown unaffected by vigor and also requires the revealed debuff. It’s not meant to replace the utility of evasion of daredevil, but simply blend in together some of the features. At perfect utilization, it’s effectively unmodified vigor, traited (via alacrity) it can be used slightly more frequently, but is otherwise strictly worse.
Daredevil effectively replaces Acrobatics, Shadow Arts, and parts of Crit Strikes, and it’s definitely a superior melee/evasion option in terms of sheer evasion potential.
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Landspeed between camps means very little in terms of small group performance, frankly, unless all you do is flip camps. I’d prefer to maintain the ability for my 5-man to take and defend keeps outnumbered, however. Here are the problems I see in the new BL’s:
- Keeps are convoluted and too large for defense by small groups.
- Barriers and obstacles/shrines make travseral potentially much slower.
- Travel routes are primarily totally linear, making unpredictability in movement difficult.
- Lords take longer to kill and are objectively more difficult via gimmicks.
- Limited open-field fighting space and over-emphasis on vertical design favors some classes or styles of play a little too much and trivializes or over-complicates fighting and skirmishes.
- Everything about the map improves with a ktrain/zerg due to low individual player visibility from scouting players paired with a vast number of corridors to slip through and the highly-linear nature of the maps; if opposed outnumbered, there is little possibility of taking objectives.
Edit:
I would not expect an analysis of the borderlands with respect to roaming to directly map onto an analysis with respect to defending.
“Defending” is part of roaming, getting to the fights is half the equation, what you describe is camp flipping, not roaming/smallscale.
The inspiration for this thread was solo/small-scale as defined as offensive small-team play. Specifically, the complaint was that camps are too far away from towers. I set out to show that this was not the case, but as you said, that’s only one side of the equation. I’ll change the thread title to be more accurate.
Whoops, didn’t see this.
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A lot of comments here seem to be based on heresay or speculation. I started raiding last week; it definitely needs effort, but the whole elitism stance is fairly baseless and not exclusive to raids. Dungeons and fractal players screamed zerk only for the longest time too. I’ve generally had really good pug experiences raiding. Team setup requires patience, but its not impossible. Set up your own team and you can specify the experience level. Ive also set up training runs before where experienced players joined and offered to teach.
I’d hardly say “most people” dont care about raiding, most of my guild raids, and it didnt come together when raids were introduced, we generally had people interested in it, whether it was inter guild raiding or pugging.
When I want to make a dungeon group,. I put up an ad, dungeon path casaul, fun run and I get people pretty kitten ed fast.
I’ve never not beaten a dungeon with any group I’ve gotten that way.
Try that with a raid sometimes.
Um, good for you? Not sure why you are replying to me though, i know raids need specific builds, and i dont mind that.
I’m replying to you because what I’m saying gainsays what’s your say. You’re claiming that people are just talking about elitism, but you know, it’s more than just elitism. It’s about having to have X build, X profession and until now, that’s really gone against what Guild Wars 2 has been about.
Could I run any path of Arah with 5 necros. I could. And not even five necros specced to death either.
This content CREATES that elitisim. People are calling it elitism, but it’s really not. It’s a requirement born of necessity that says you must play this way to win.
That’s a problem. It’s also why I replied to your post.
This content was created by this design on the basis that elitism was the motivation for suggesting for the content to be created.
It’s somewhat a failure by design in respect to raids themselves, but mostly the result of poor wealth distribution mechanics and a bad split between formats, as well as ANet catering towards a certain audience in an unjust way. We’re all aware that the game is meant (in theory) to have something for everyone.
The players interested in clearing hard content should do so for the sake of clearing hard content. They should be rewarded proportionally for their time, maybe slightly better, but not consistent ascended gear and further at the expense of nerfed dungeon rewards and nerfed rewards from other methods of play.
One of my highest-rated posts of all time on these boards was to an elitist claiming that the game was too easy and the fights posed no challenge, demanding harder content and as a means to filter out and demoralize bad players. My response was simply for him to remove all of his armor and equip a level 0 white weapon and enter AC solo. He asked why he would waste his time. Obviously he wasn’t genuinely interested in the hard content.
The game should be about enjoyment regardless of how one achieves that within the confines of the Terms of Use. If raids didn’t provide the best rewards, I doubt people would do them except for the players who genuinely prefer the raid environment, which is great. And if that’s the case, it has to do with an uneven means of wealth acquisition game-wide. That’s what needs fixing. If it were all split relatively evenly, we likely wouldn’t be having this discussion, because those intimidated by the prospect or frustrated over forced comps or simply people who dislike PvE wouldn’t honestly care.
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There should be a rule – Thou shall not make any suggestions revolving around Revealed. It’s a lazy, not well thought of mechanic that should really go away.
Just my 2 cents.
It’s a necessary one. Recall the days of old when it wasn’t around and thief was absolutely and totally overpowered? Access to the Revealed mechanic by other classes is lazy, but it’s a lazy but necessary solution because giving so much stealth to other classes is a lazy solution. The increased access to revealing the thief by other classes is part of the basis of this spec’s design; it acts as a means to counter the hard counter which was implemented due to a snowball of poor previous design choices. I sincerely doubt ANet will reduce or remove stealth access on scrapper/mesmer/trapper runes, and making Revealed Training serve a definitive purpose while giving a committal playstyle to the thief rather than the non-committal one it has now will turn the tables on how the profession can be played, which was the goal of the elites; it wasn’t just power creep.
If you did read everything and still feel the implementation of the spec is shoddy, I can’t help you. This is numerically the best implementation I was able to devise which solved conceptual problems the thief is facing right now in combat, rather than just sheer buffs. Buffs got us into the mess we’re in now. I’d rather not keep pushing for them.
-To be honest I didnt even consider ink purge. S/d does not have much reveal access, CnD is a little expensive for one cleanse and relying on steal…I dont know. But i’d have to try it out.
-I wouldnt worry about it being too powerful. I mostly wanted to justify why one would play s/d DE oder DrD. Its definetely a tough decision due to the lack of UC and EA.
-Youre right, it could be even more devastating on rifle.. Smoke tracer+ quick pockets would essentially gain you more initiative then you loose. But I dont think putting a icd on the trait would be too much of a problem.
Tho if I could choose: I would replace the trait with one that removes cooldown on weapon swap entirely. It fits the thief better and would finally make for a valuable choice.
It’s just a matter of deciding what that ICD should be. It may also simply be a matter of proposing that SHF either doesn’t count as a swap, or have a rule for Quick Pockets which discounts SHF. I’ll need to do some tests later. Asking for complete skill changes is beyond the scope of the thread, though, and if anything, it’d likely need to be like Fast Hands – 5s reduction on swap. On-swap sigils would be bonkers without it.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up on thief getting rifle because it is a close ranged class. I have heard the arguments that there is no reason it can’t be but if you look at the profession mechanic you can see that it is. Steal is a gap closer and has many traits that buff it (which all say when you steal). Most notably Improvisation. What are you gonna do with 2 stolen bundles if you get no stolen bundles? See how it conflicts?
Also none of the elite classes got any drastic changes to their profession mechanics. Most got additions. Even Reaper shroud is still a shroud that uses life force and Berserker whatever is just their old mechanic with fire added.
I recognize that the thief is a close-ranged class in its current state due to its engage and disengage + stealth potential and very high damage output on these melee options. That said, the rifle doesn’t bring that much damage to the table – it’s similar to that of the pistol unless playing in melee range via Noxious Fumes. Specializations are designed to change the way the class is played as a whole, and I think there’s room to give the thief ranged weapon access at a cost of a trait line and non-committal combat identity/stealth access.
Stygian Charge is affected by on-steal traits, which I did account for. In the writings above, it’s mentioned that improvisation will reset the cooldown of the Stygian Hunter Form transformation skill if Stygian Charge is used, enabling a reveal skill to enable SHF -> Fakeout Bolt + Stygian Assault -> reveal expires ->teleport to range via the delay on Fakeout Bolt -> Charge away/tangential from target -> Reveal from Charge to full initiative -> SHF immediately again to perform Ink Splatter without needing to first Assault. On-steal effects which affect enemies such as Mug are also worded to pick the closest target to the caster at the end of the charge (within a very small radius) to be applied to, still enabling their effects but requiring melee-range to use. I’ve taken all of these traits and effects into account and made sure absolutely every single one of the on-steal traits would continue to be useful for the elite spec in some way or another, even if not useful in the same exact way it is on the core thief with Steal.
Guardians -> DH’s had all of their virtues entirely replaced and re-designed, as Jana mentioned. Reaper shroud, while using the same resource mechanic, honestly makes the necro play like an entirely different class altogether. The changes for the reaper are the most profound and most impressive example of how elite specializations should be implemented as a means to change the way the class is played. Maintaining the steal and stealth mechanics while giving the thief something new and balanced which completely changes its style that isn’t just sheer power creep such as increased stats to reflect a new style is simply not a possibility I see. Due to the tight restrictions on the thief being melee-only as it has been, there’s little available room left for growth here.
Something needs to give to make way for more openings, and the difficulty in deciding what needs to change is the basis for this thread; helping the developers, if stuck, overcome this obstacle. Changing the profession mechanics in a balanced way that isn’t simply an improvement is the ideal I’m attempting to push. For this reason I also believe the class developers largely failed on the elite specializations; it was power creep that was simply not necessary, and many professions saw not playstyle adjustments but rather just numbers increases.
If there’s an improvement or design shift possible which may enable alternate styles of play in a balanced manner without changing the class mechanic, I’d love to discuss them. Based on your response overall, though, I first suggest you really dig deeper into my proposal, as your response (based on what I’ve said above) indicates that you’ve only really looked on the surface level of the design. I encourage you to look deeper and post your thoughts. A large portion of this has been shaped and adjusted by feedback and discussion among participants in this thread as well as friends of mine. The more eyes the better, and I’ll readily make changes if things are not behaving as intended (like discussion on Quick Pockets).
Thanks so much for the dedication. The “collection” was supposed to be its own thread. Mods merged it with the other one because they’re “too similar,” despite my intent being very far from some skill ideas haphazardly posted by many others. Hopefully some more people post here :T
Covering Fire
Pretty stock-and-standard build as a +1 role. Definitely something I had considered during design.
Mobility is primarily supposed to come from charge, and again, RH is simply a not-quite-perfect-but-still-near-identical option to replace the need for ToTC (as this build doesn’t need trickery). A more mobile build with permanent swiftness would likely orient itself towards x/Tr/DE. Since the Deadeye isn’t really meant to feature innately high mobility out of SHF, it’s intended that the landspeed would be a bit slower.
The hidden thief issue is actually one I considered and is partially why I made the Impossible Escape trait. Used in tandem, this causes charge to no longer reveal but simply refund initiative, but makes gaining the revealed debuff harder to get for SHF. The Deadeye can either play more selfish and use the Hidden Thief + Impossible Escape combo, or can play into the more support-oriented role of the Deadeye and SA and use venoms.
Condition Nightmare
Also pretty much mirroring expectations and trap synergy for solid on-point defense. I do worry still about Noxious Fumes doing too much damage. It may need to drop to 4 or 5 stacks, as the poison damage output from two uses of the skill + needle trap seems very concerning, especially since it can do it and then immediately enter stealth via Stakeout or any other ability. That said, it does require the enemy to play relatively poorly, so I’m a bit on the fence. Its synergy with needle trap and other CC’s may warrant this reduction, however.
Marauder
Another relatively-standard idea, though the choice on Quick-Footed surprised me over Ink Purge, particularly since you’re only running TP. Any particular reason for this?
Statements about this combo being stronger than what daredevil offers has me a bit worried. I want to make sure the profession can perform well but will not simply be better (a concern addressed in my OP). I understand S/D is considered fairly weak right now in sPvP, but have not played it in sPvP much at all. Are there fears that this build might be too strong (I don’t see any at the moment due to the cooldown on charge/skirmish being longer than Daredevil/Acro gains)? Do you think Tr/Acro/DE would be too evasive?
As a side note, do you think the swiftness uptime is too excessive with ToTC + QR + QF? I’m feeling a bit wary of giving the build too much mobility as a result of pressing F1, but also want to make sure the profession has its needed mobility in SHF.
Jumper
Glad the build looks fun, and the management of constantly switching and maintaining revealed/SHF/stealth is absolutely something I want to promote.
The Quick Pockets + SHF (Let’s not forget Improvisation synergy, too!) interaction was one I explicitly planned earlier on, however this was planned mostly for the rifle and the overarching theme of the Deadeye getting a lot of access to more initiative regeneration. That said, I fear there may be a little bit too much initiative regeneration on the D/P combo as to enable a lot of Shadow Shot spamming via flickering SHF immediately after revealed from a stealth attack, causing a QP proc, and with improvisation, two of these procs (or four, depending on how swaps count if leaving SHF would trigger this). I’m actually a bit worried that the condi rifle build paired with this idea would be an over-performer through spamming Noxious Fumes.
This issue seems to lie more with Quick Pockets and follow-up potential rather than improvisation’s sheer initiative number returned per use. Is suggesting giving an ICD to improvisation reasonable? I fear that subsequent nerfs to Noxious Fumes and potentially suggestive nerfs to Shadow Shot’s damage (which many are already asking for) may be necessary. Let me know how you feel.
Conclusion
Interesting. The damage issue is more or less one with Daredevil, however. I can’t reasonably justify making any build get competitive damage without making it either uninteresting or OP. The “better” acrobat is mostly referring to conceptual design and the soundness of it. As it is, PvE DPS doesn’t even run Trickery because the best DPS is just DA/CS/DD running staff and spamming 1. I hoped that the rifle’s vulnerability and break bar destruction via Concussive Rounds and AoE healing would justify the class’s use and give it a definitive role. The healing potential is very, very high.
I’ll see if there’s much I can do about the under-performing utility problem and synergy with Acrobatics. Acro ultimately lacks some meaningful damage and control, which I hoped the DE could provide a little bit of both, particularly when going back on the forced-tempo of Skirmish with a little bit of extra sporadic behavior DD has as to the old Vigor. Ideally, a pure-evasion build should likely favor the Daredevil, as the class features evades as a primary mechanic. Returning the tempo and diversity of old Acrobatics while providing a sound framework for a variety of styles of play other than evasion spam is something I hoped the Deadeye could deliver.
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Recent record in WvW is hovering around 24k (running signets). Poor ele.
Signets offers huge damage potential, but the recent implementation of tons of passive invuln/CC-reflection/deflection/defense effects have made what was an already-pretty-bad build even worse. Trapper can do more, but for WvW at least, I’m not fond of the trapper style.
I’m not having an issue with it.
Game isn’t balanced for beans.
The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.
But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.
If you don’t like raiding as content, then, well, don’t raid?
Raids have been generally well received by the players that do them. They are one of the most polished parts of this game.
Honestly, the only “elitist” attitude I’ve seen is from non raiders. It seems selfish to me to demand that all content cater to your skill level. The real problem is the severe lack of content since HOT.
That said, I’ll be in SAB all weekend. Not sure whether I’ll want to beat all the wing 2 bosses this week.
I wish it was a matter of skill. That’s the thing. Raids are not at all indicative of skilled play. It’s just optimization and then executing on it. There’s not much intrinsically difficult on the personal level so much as build-dependent and so long as the raid leader knows how to order people around. Removing the timer would make them a lot more approachable and remove much of the elitism associated with fixed builds. The pug dungeon community was quite large. I’ve never joined a zerk/AP requirement dungeon group nor have I started one, and some of the pug groups I have joined have rivaled some guilds’ speed clear times, despite the groups not being fully optimized or people abiding to a strict strategy deemed by the community as “necessary.”
Given the opportunity to play as they want to, they’ll complete the content together. Raiding should be hard on skill, not hard on build-dependence and composition.
If you’re a PvP player, it’s mandatory. None of the core specs come even close to the elites, and balance at the moment is pretty (understatement) wonky.
If you’re a open-world grinder and loved playing the Silverwastes over and over, you’ll love it.
If you played mostly WvW, don’t bother and save your money for either another game or until they fix a lot of the garbage brought into WvW with HoT.
If you ran dungeons, again, don’t bother, as rewards got nerfed. If you liked to run super-organized/hardcore groups, well, there are raids.
Imho, the only reason to get the expansion is the specializations you see as fun. I like HoT only because the reaper is an enjoyable and fresh take on necro. Otherwise I dislike the entire expansion and think the price is far too steep for what is offered.
Something lately I’m noticing too is my player just stands in place. Won’t respond to directional keys but skills still work, anyone else experience that?
Did you get cc’d, especially by one of the new mechanics/skills like taunt or headbutt? Sometimes it clears if you stop pressing movement keys or get cc’d again. Other times you still need to /emote.
Hmmm not sure I’ll have to check my combat log. It does always happen during combat specifically. I’ll try the emoting thing, thanks chaba!
Typically happens at the end of an immobilize. That said, I have experienced an issue only once where my movement keys randomly didn’t work until released/pressed again after a short period of idle time out of combat. I tried to replicate this to no avail.
You neglect 8 to 12% bonus damage from food likely offesetting the entirety of might gain.
As far as glassy goes, I haven’t seen a roaming player run a toughness build except for dire condi specs, but nothing bursts them because the build is just overpowered on defenses in general. The damage is so high in WvW that in most cases defensive stats are a waste in anything except group play, or on a condi build.
Berserker isn’t really that “hilariously glassy”. It’s kind of the status quo on roaming builds, just saying. Mesmer medium health pool and lots of invulns compared to most other classes keeps the class pretty resilient in terms of incoming damage so long as it’s played well. Death’s charge also has a very high coefficient if the attacks land, and its final attack also has a fairly high coefficient. But then again, a dodge roll negates the whole thing, and if you get jumped by a necro open-field, there are L2P issues there.
Most good mesmers I’ve seen maintain scholar runes bonuses, or can engage from relative safety for the gank with them via stealth/ranged advantage/blur/blink. There’s one particularly good one I know of in my current tier on an enemy server (who does happen to run full berserker gear and is one of the bases for my discussion) who repeatedly wins 1v5+ through good timing of defensive skills and really good positioning. I dueled him for around four hours one day and didn’t win a match unless he dropped Chaos and if I managed to fake him out for my own, predictable, and easily-negated 35k burst.
Add in fire/air sigils for another 3-4k expected, btw.
Being able to find an enemy blob that was sieging a keep, easier/simple map traversal and layout, simplistic lord design which enabled small groups to take objectives quickly and focus on using important skills and cooldowns to kill other players rather than being chain-CC’ed forever by an NPC.
Most notably, a more level terrain area where fighting could be done and movement patterns would be impossible to predict or track without active scouting efforts, rather than having players be forced into an unnecessary amount of chokes guarded/gated behind NPC scouts revealing map positions and pointless barriers/movement impediments.
The downed player walking around thing is definitely a bug caused by lag. I’ve seen it happen to “friendly” enemies and allies I’ve been on teamspeak with.
The surprise “rallying” thing is something that I suspect is a hack, however. In the OP’s case it was a warrior, but I’ve run into many people recently playing a plethora of classes who definitely go into downed state, do not move as downed players don’t, and then fully resurrect while someone is in the process of performing a spike or cleaving them down. It happened to me yesterday with a ranger who would immediately get up (not healing/reviving on pet or anything – went from the 50% downed hp to revived and at at full instantaneously) on more than one occasion, and I’ve seen it happen several other times as well.
That’s the thing: players CAN change the outcome of a match with auto-upgrades. The belief that upgrades are deterministic is complete BS, and frankly, upgrades are hard to shut down only because of the speedy yaks guild upgrade or when people are actively defending dolyaks, in which case, that’s a community effort to ensure/change the course of the game on both fronts. Denying yaks themselves is easy to do and rarely are they defended, meaning any contribution can be small. The problem will only get worse with speedy yaks, and as such, even the removal of the auto-upgrade system will not change this. If anything, it will make it worse, as then ensuring yaks reach their destination will have an even bigger impact on the game, meaning more guilds will do it.
Making it easy to unlock and hard to maintain is still flawed; it ultimately will act as a unsustainable force which will cause competition to be determined even further by those with the most numbers and richest players. Applied Strength/Fortitude were removed and increased supply capacity took a rank reduction because of this problem being perpetuated. There’s no reason to make it difficult to achieve at all; either these options need to be made extremely accessible or simply not available to remove this distinction.
As for being unable to defend them, it’s not really an issue to lose a tower 3 v 50. Or even 3 v 10 after a long siege. The problem about losing structures too easily is the exploitable safe spots for siege on certain structures. Fix those issues and defense becomes much more fair and matches realism and war strategy; siege tactics often hinged on running a keep dry of its resources and then launching an all-out-assault when the enemy was weak. There should be no reason for only a few people to hold off a blob, or for a tower to be impregnable if nobody leaves it to help smuggle in supply to rebuild siege or repair structural damage.
I’m confused, I got a refund for HoT but kept my core account… :o
Was it before or after the expansion launched?
There’s often a period of time after purchase that people can get refunds. It may have fallen in that time frame.
See my earlier post, in which I asked for a refund within the first hour of release. If you asked for a refund at or shortly after launch, even if not logged into the account, you were denied this and the account would be closed, which is consistent of the discussion and new policies above.
As someone else mentioned, though, nobody should expect to get a refund after playing. The only disputable part is if the content hasn’t been played, which is like being rejected for trying to return an unopened console game at the store.
One word:
Elitism.
And this is why the game, which prospered so much at launch, didn’t feature any kind of “elite” or arbitrarily “difficult” content. And also part of why, HoT, an expansion featured as pleasing the “hardcore” crowd has failed in the eyes of a bulk majority of players when looking at sheer numbers.
Strictly speaking, not many people care. And those that do are likely too exclusive to not care about anyone not involved in their personal affairs.
Auto-upgrades are fine imho, and honestly as someone who plays a lot of defense in off-hours, it’s REALLY nice to be able to not need to constantly run around in circles blowing my own currency for the sake of increasing defenses. It’s not interactive. It’s not fun. It’s just a meaningless expenditure justified only by playing for PPT. I’ve asked staunch defenders of the previous system to refresh siege to maintain it for prime time, and these same players refuse, asking for others to do it for them. The defenders and scouts doing this job largely didn’t enjoy it. They did it due to a sense of obligation and wanting to win.
Having the chance to go out and put pressure on enemies during this time to divert attention away from our objectives gives defensive play a bit more meaning than camping structures and asking for permission from a guy with a dorito (if any are even there) to spend supply on things.
The guild upgrades are really the problems I have with what changed in HoT aside from the DBL. These definitely demoralized my small WvW guild to a point of no longer playing.
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It’s convinced a few guildmembers of mine to return once it comes out.
A reversion of lost guild upgrades which we will never hope to achieve and the removal of the new BS in terms of banners/levers would likely bring everyone back from my guild.
Agreed, though I think Defy Pain is a fair trait on the basis that the warrior kit is very simple and pretty easy to read
As much as I dislike passives like that, I wonder if it would be acceptable for the Thief to have a similar trait since it is very squishy. Something along the lines of…
Cheat Death
While your health is above the 50% threshold, if an incoming strike would reduce your health to 0, your health is reduced to 1 instead.That way, it would really only protect glass builds from being 1-shot. It probably wouldn’t save them, but at least it would give them a chance.
We already do in Acrobatics. I don’t like the line that much anymore for this reason.
We have enough active tricks up our sleeves to not need one so long as a lot of the other passives get removed or changed. The war’s kit is really just so simple it justifies it, however other classes weren’t designed initially to work like this.
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I understand not rolling back to an extent as that could be a complex nightmare for support, and then a horrible game-decision one with the economic issues alone.
It’d also be kind of like opening a packaged console game, playing it/beating it, and then going to try and return it for full price; it just doesn’t work that way.
That said, I tried getting a refund before I even logged into my account when HoT released and the policy was still account suspension, however, despite there being no things to roll back or any potential damage (a sealed game). Once you pay, you’re effectively locked in, and I’m not too keen on that much.
It’s kind of natural progression, though. Most if not all of the innovation of online gaming/MMO gaming is derived from Dungeons and Dragons, which is turn-based out of sheer necessity to keep the game manageable by the DM. With high-speed computation and a way to really simulate the battlefield, there’s little reason not to get as close to immersion as possible.
A big thing about MMO’s is the immersive factor of having everyone being a play in a dynamic world. It’s not so much about the story of the game, but the stories of the players. It’s been this way since the early days of narrative role-playing games. Being able to be even more immersed through a more realistic depiction of combat is only natural and a logical progression of development.
“Traditional” is dying because early conventions were imposed due to mechanical limitations. It’s also why combat-LARP is more popular than turn-based. Since action-oriented gameplay and encapsulating more mechanics enables mass-appeal, it makes the astronomical development costs associated with modern games more manageable and more likely to profit, meaning investors are more likely to get behind funding development.
I understand the lamentations, but largely this is just the natural progression of things, and for many reasons, makes sense. It’s not that MMO’s are dying; it’s that the way MMO’s are being made and designed has changed, and as such so has the way the games are played.
Folks, this probably isn’t everything. These are some big things and really, really big ones which the community has been actively asking for. Things which pretty much admit errors in HoT and are attempting to fix or completely undo them.
I’m glad to see Alpine BL’s will be returning.
Since there is no generic “profession discussion” forum, I think General Discussion is probably the most reasonable place to put this thread.
In essence, I’d like to make this thread to inspire and compile resources of fleshed-out ideas which developers may be able to take a glance at for inspiration if they’re having troubles designing the new specializations which will likely be included as a major selling feature of Expansion Pack 2. I want to make sure the next batch of specializations are inspired, creative, and really nailed down before release. Developing stuff is pretty exhaustive and strains creativity, so assisting them in delivering content that we as players actively want is something we should do our best to do.
This topic is meant to house detailed, balanced, and comprehensive ideas, not as a place to make brief suggestions; feedback, unless pertinent to the thread, should be reserved for the rightful topics which formal suggestions were initially created.
I encourage those interested in helping promote and unify creative solutions to make their own specified threads on their suggestions, and simply link them (with a brief description) with a post on this one. I’ll do my best to update the OP with links by core profession based on what’s posted here.
I’ll start out with my own creation as a sample regarding desired scope of completion, the Deadeye, as a proposal for the thief.
Elementalist
Engineer
Guardian
Mesmer
Necromancer
Ranger
Revenant
Thief
Warrior
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I agree with Hanza, the amount of passive play with classes now is out of control. All of the ‘cause X effect when hit by cc’ need to go along with the toning down of cc in general. Passive invuln like auto endure pain are just lazy and stupid, and shouldn’t even be considered for a passive procing trait, the skill itself is fine because you have to actually use it at the proper time instead of it activating when you get your goose cooked as a get out of jail free card. Things like this are just lazy for any competitive aspect of a game.
Agreed, though I think Defy Pain is a fair trait on the basis that the warrior kit is very simple and pretty easy to read except for predator-skinned Gun Flame. The CC-reflection and plethora of other passive procs need to go, though. Even the new one in Acrobatics should be replaced with ones which promote active play.
Or you know, you either catch them off guard or bait their dodges and defenses like you’re supposed to when playing burst anything.
In WvW? Not at all. I don’t have a mesmer geared for it, but I know of several mesmers who I’ve dueled extensively on my reaper who can 100-0 me through shroud and all health in one combo. Not uncommon to see shatters well above 5k per clone.
It gets a free reset on its important cooldowns/shatters uninterrupted,
I’ll give you this one, sitting in stealth is a great way to get cooldowns back.
resurrect downed players
The moment a player is getting resurrected, the stealthed mesmer has committed suicide. Their location and current action has now been pinpointed, and they should be revealed and killed.
Additionally, the OP is obviously talking about a dueling situation, not a group fight. His ridiculous claims about assassination potential from a glassy mantra mesmer are clearly not functional in a group fight.
enable portal play
You do this with shadow refuge, you don’t waste a full bar of skills and traitline on a mesmer to accomplish the same effect.
And once again, you don’t portal play in a duel. The op is complaining about being assassinated by a glassy mesmer, not that he got outplayed by a portal strategy.
deals damage from any clones or phantasms while enabling an OOC reset while the opponent can’t
Yeah…that’s not how combat works. Firstly, clones and phantasms will be killed in an instant by anyone with a functioning head on their shoulders. Secondly, your illusions keep you in combat just the same as if you were smacking them personally.
stops single-target/targeting, and gains lots of boons and can stack protection and regen.
Sure, but what is this accomplishing? You just wasted your entire skillset to get this long stealth, there’s no followup that’s coming from it. Any possible followup is easy to predict and counter.
In WvW stealth is king for most classes with access to it despite it not being the case in sPvP due to the simple fact a stealthed target can’t cap or decap. As it stands currently, mesmers have some of the most powerful and useful stealthing abilities and synergy in the entirety of WvW.
This…is only marginally true. Having the capability to stealth is important in WvW because it allows you to survive and escape situations that would otherwise be deadly. However, it’s far from being the 1-button-win that you’re insinuating it is. Many classes have very potent anti-stealth tools these days, and that means that just hitting stealth isn’t good enough to keep yourself alive.
I understand you’re a very reputable mesmer, but I’m sorry, a large majority of top-tier roaming and guild groups will definitively state that the claim of a stealthed mesmer is a useless one is a gross oversimplification of the format and the class’s capabilities in WvW.
Once again, you’re just blurring points and being incredibly disambiguous. If you’re talking about roaming and guild groups, then you have a thief or smoke blasts to stealth the mesmer, not a PU mesmer wasting all their cooldowns. It sounds to me like you have a problem with stealth and a problem with the raw utility that mesmer offers, but your complaints are 110% off topic with respect to this thread, which is complaining about PU.
The reason why stealth on the mesmer is good to begin with is because of PU. Don’t use PU and mesmer stealth is honestly pretty terrible. I have more issues with the trait being random boon application making reliable counterplay nigh impossible, which is how one beats a stealthed thief, which given practice, isn’t hard. I disagree that PU is overpowered in duration but instead the boon access being random, which is something the OP wants buffed. I simply countered your statement which stated that a stealthed mesmer is a useless one. I don’t see how that’s off topic nor incorrect, because everything I said is true and in direct response to your comment. What the OP said prior is irrelevant if you make assumptions about context and then make blanket statements about those assumptions.
For resurrecting, F4 for invuln if you’re getting bombed. Otherwise it’s a safe, hidden res. This is a big deal in skirmishes and it happens very often in WvW. It’s the safest ressing strategy possible, since PU/mesmer stealth is strictly superior to that of what the thief is able to do due to its defensive superiority.
Re-read the OP. Nowhere does he mention dueling, or even being bursted. He actually says he plays mesmer in a later post, and again, does not mention dueling. There is a lot of damage, and relative safety in that damage in WvW. While not true in sPvP, the mesmer’s innate burst damage coming from a MoP shatter defensive-trait PU build often exceeds the 30-40k margin within two or three seconds. This is powerful regardless of context, and a lot of WvW guilds are running midline chronomancer compositions due to the burst and sustain the class offers from range with bonus stealth for handling periphery.
I do know how combat works. However if you disengage and your phantasm applies a condition post-cleanse, you kill it off with leaving range or shattering it, and OOC while the opponent keeps a condition, letting you get the instant-out-of-range OOC enabled by the clone/phantasm while the opponent has to wait for condition and opponent-leaving timeout, letting the mesmer get an OOC advantage from a stealth disengage.
Portal play doesn’t hinge on SR when MI provides sufficient stealth duration for a mesmer to perform Portal → MI → Blink → Portal and let its following group handle the engage for the mesmer to re-position with attention off of it when it leaves stealth.
Arguing there’s no follow-through is weak isn’t true, and arguing that it’s predictable is also not true. Like a thief, a mesmer can leave stealth early and attack, or keep waiting. You just admitted stealth is a great way to reset cooldowns. That gives the mesmer the ability to re-engage at peak strength. The mesmer has more options for follow-though, however, in that it can use phantasms and clones to attack and enable without leaving stealth, making the follow-through trickier to predict than any other class with stealth access.
I don’t believe stealth is a free win button. It’s much more intricate, as are the mechanics of the mesmer as a whole. I disagreed with your statement saying that a stealthed mesmer is useless and that I firmly believe stealth is a very strong mechanic as a whole. PU pushes this over the edge via its boon randomness, but that’s not what I posted about.
Overall I think you’re correct, but something you may have neglected to consider is that a shiro revenant is as effective if not more effective than a thief at chasing down and applying heavy pressure to a mesmer. There’s a reason you still see nobody running power mesmer. It’s simply too fragile to match up to a lot of the meta classes, not just thief.
So, there’s still pretty heavy restrictions on what can and can’t be run as a mesmer, thief just isn’t the limiting factor anymore.
As irrelevant as Azukas’ response to this post of yours, pyro, I have to disagree as well. I’m among the small handful of people who ran power shatter this season, up to mid-diamond before I got stuck. The limiting factor was very much still thieves.
Your points on stealth and sustained-dps are correct but the most difficult part about facing a thief is their ability to teleport AWAY from you, allowing them to reset at any point and return at their leisure. This is something revenants can’t do, and I’ve found that I have far less trouble with power revenants than I do with a good thief.
As a power mesmer vs thief it really comes down to personal skill I feel, and what build the both of you are running. Now we’ve all faced those dirty thieves who are just stupid good at their class. Afterwards even I found myself saying “#@$%^ hard counter BS”. Though I did learn to replay them fights in my head to find out where my errors were, and in most instances those players just capitalized on my mistakes.
I remember fighting this one thief around July of last year, and he whipped my kitten good. I literally had no shot. I gave the ole @$(&%#( response, but then I sat and thought about our fights in the match. I realized somethings. Every time I went stealth he KNEW where I was. It was uncanny and alarming. He’d stealth and I’d respond with my own stealth to bleed out his resources. Then BAM I’d eat a Backstab after 2 seconds of being in stealth. He also dodged most of my mantras like he had some 6th sense. Crazy kitten man crazy kitten.
Now I fight revenants and I find that their reveal doesn’t matter that much to me cause stealthing at range is the norm. They can’t really get away from me, and their big hitting skills are easily countered by the fact we kitten out extra targets + other active defenses.
This is the big thing. Mesmer loses a lot of potential against the thief and not so much the revenant because of target-breaking with stealth. Shatters, GS skills, moa, etc., all have pretty much no use when they can’t select a target. The rev absolutely applies better pressure than the thief, and is why it’s taken primarily as the premiere +1 class now, however nothing currently still counters the mesmer as well as a more-or-less meta D/P thief.
As far as tracking stealth goes, it’s a skill that often comes when playing as a stealth class. It is for this reason the most common suggestion people make when it comes to learning how to beat a thief is to simply play as one for a while. Common movement patterns in how people handle being in stealth begin to emerge, making stealth play predictable the more and more you play with it and play against it. This is my biggest argument about why I think PU as a trait is overpowered; it removes the predictability of stealth in many cases, potentially punishing really good play or rewarding poor play.
If the boons were ordered specifically and the randomness removed, the mesmer would still get its benefits and could combo knowing the boon order, but opponents could counterplay the trait better through really skilled play both by tracking stealthed movements and keeping track of boon timers, which at this level should always be rewarded with the expected result happening.
The mesmer in its current state needs a lot of work. Innate burst is problematic for balance reasons, especially when the damage isn’t acquired through damage modifiers. I think the thief is well-designed in this regard, for to get damage on the thief, one must invest heavily into it, often at the cost of defenses and utility. Simply buffing the mesmer is just out of the question, however, because those who have played WvW know well that a full defensive trait configuration running ridiculous amounts of chain blocks/invulns can still 100-0 warriors, since shatter burst is just so high baseline. With this, the mesmer has little room for growth, and over-dependence on shatter and powerful niche utilities makes the class feel unrewarding in many aspects of play. I’m not an expert mesmer or frankly in a position to really talk numbers at the moment, so I’m unsure what a good solution may be exactly, but the current class model isn’t sustainable unless either the sPvP/WvW stat disparity is removed (and I favor WvW stats (still with inaccessibility to certain gear configurations like dire/perplexity/trapper runes etc.) in sPvP since WvW is also PvE and many more builds are viable in WvW), or the class as a whole gets re-worked with multi-format balance and scaling in mind.
I rarely if ever agree with Azukas. It isn’t doom and gloom, and the bunker mesmer meta was absolutely atrocious and yes that build in its entire concept absolutely deserved the ax based on almost unanimous player feedback.
I’m big into theory. I’ll leave this snippet I made day 1 of the alacrity nerfs here:
… the format rewards and puts emphasis on Chronomancers and mesmers, because they shut down a lot of other builds; they can burst harder than any other spec and offer a lot of team mobility and control of a fight, which depending on target prioritization, can swing the success of a fight massively. Since sPvP is taking a turn for offensive stats and removing pretty much the entire concept of the pure bunker tank, mesmers/chronomancers may potentially have a dramatic presence in high-skill groups for point control and counter-burst.
The mesmer is in a really awkward state. It has a profound impact on every single format and is almost always able to be useful, however none of its builds which are useful and very powerful among the game modes are very engaging to play, for their power comes from their relatively extreme utility of a few skills and wildly inconsistent performance between formats due to the nature of stat scaling and the math behind the class. Its only sense of power comes from 1v1 encounters, and the results here are very inconsistent between formats, for in WvW the class is much stronger relative to others than it is in sPvP.
Further, the thief is effectively no longer used in the format, so there is more leniency for mesmers in the competitive scene at the moment. My predictions are that as the meta evolves to include mesmers more as a counter to the unstoppable boon-heavy builds such as the scrapper and tempest (and to an extent reaper), if these overpowered builds are left unchecked, team wins on the competitive level will become more about team composition over mechanical skill more than they ever were, with counter-picking on the mesmer/thief level being the biggest deciding factors.
Both the mesmer and thief need substantial work to become competitive high-skill classes with the capacity to swing matches in their favor while not being overpowered, however this must also come paired with substantial nerfs to boons and sheer damage/sustain nerfs to tempest, revenant, and scrapper.
Why do you think I’m talking about PvP? I’m talking about for WvW.
You’re still wrong? You know what a mesmer sitting in stealth for 30 seconds does?
Nothing. It does nothing.
It gets a free reset on its important cooldowns/shatters uninterrupted, resurrect downed players, enable portal play, deals damage from any clones or phantasms while enabling an OOC reset while the opponent can’t, stops single-target/targeting, and gains lots of boons and can stack protection and regen. In WvW stealth is king for most classes with access to it despite it not being the case in sPvP due to the simple fact a stealthed target can’t cap or decap. As it stands currently, mesmers have some of the most powerful and useful stealthing abilities and synergy in the entirety of WvW.
I understand you’re a very reputable mesmer, but I’m sorry, a large majority of top-tier roaming and guild groups will definitively state that the claim of a stealthed mesmer is a useless one is a gross oversimplification of the format and the class’s capabilities in WvW.
Frankly, a non-stealthed mesmer is much less useful and accomplishes next to nothing for the format.
What makes a person type essays like these on the forums?
A genuine passion for the game itself and what once was in attempts to improve upon it.
It’d be fine if every class just didn’t have auto-proc defensive abilities like CC reflection/stun, auto-weakness, auto-daze, auto-invuln, auto-negation, etc.
be aware of opponents boons
I may be missing something completely obvious, but outside of boons, is there any way for a Thief to know if another player does have “auto-this” or “auto-that” traited before actually triggering them?
I don’t really want the Thief to have passives like everyone else. Keep it an active playstyle. But at least give it the ability to punch through or negate passives… or more tools to deal with them.
Nope. You won’t know until you’ve hit them. They were initially few-and-far-between surprises, but it’s getting to a point now where a large number of builds just stack them. These effects are slowly killing the PvP formats’ legitimacy and contribute to why nobody cares about ESPORTZ!!!1 here; the only way to understand what’s going on is to know a ton about the game, which defeats the purpose of generating mass-appeal to gain popularity that e-sports scenes are trying to do.
@DeceiverX
There are some placements, like on NET in the DBL, where the cata cannot be hit by anything short of a ballista placed on the vulnerable front gate, in full view of the attackers. No matter how long it takes, that spot would remain absolutely safe.
This is a design failure on the elevation of some regions and shape of the keeps, and isn’t relevant to Proxy Catapult placement.
Also, if damage is based on the time traveled, then the time it takes to break into an undefended structure will greatly increase. I don’t think there’s any need to make people wait longer to flip something that isn’t even being attended to—that’s why fortified walls and gates on towers were nerfed, right?
And this helps solve the age-old problem of getting people to respond to a siege attempt. Frankly, if they removed safe sieging in general (trebbing structures from other structures), there would be no need to have the fortified upgrade; it could cap on reinforced.
I think AC’s, cannons, and trebs all need range reductions as well. This done with the changes to catas would result in more frequent siege offenses. If placement issues get fixed potentially with reduced splash radius on catapults or terrain tweaks (like the dumb spots on Langor and Klovan in EBG), we’d see siege between groups be more tactical in both offense and defense and help motivate fights rather than prevent them.
All I noticed here is Yak’s Bend got carried by siege-bunkering lol.
Thief/Reaper matchup is much better for the thief than scrapper.
It’d be fine if every class just didn’t have auto-proc defensive abilities like CC reflection/stun, auto-weakness, auto-daze, auto-invuln, auto-negation, etc. It was one thing on the warrior due to their kit simplicity. It’s out of hand now with no space to engage except when playing D/P and spamming 3 because it’s all that actually does work.
I never understood why shortbows are even a class of weapons in games. There is no such thing as a “shortbow.” It’s a small bow, and the only time this mattered was if the person was on a mount. Frankly, proficiency with one is the same as the other. Unlike swords, there were no effective classifications. Cultures used different lengths of bows for different military approaches. Never in history has there been a distinction between a shortbow and a longbow.
Why they never implemented the crossbow is beyond me. It’s one of history’s best ranged weapons and a staple weapon among the rogue-like classes going all the way back to the early days of Dungeons and Dragons.
The logic of the DPS meter in GW2 makes no sense based on how groups work.
As it stands, an overwhelming majority of party-wide DPS comes from supportive abilities which stack damage modifiers for the rest of the party, and then simply optimizing those effects into as much of a condensed form as possible to enable either more dedicated DPS or more modifier stacking party-wide.
If you had to pick between a thief or a chronomancer, in a mutually-exclusive choice for a raid, if you’re playing properly, you take the chrono. The same is said about a druid, warrior, etc. Sorry, selfish DPS is pointless up to the point where you’re capped on big-hitter modifiers. Since meters do not measure this data, the meters themselves are pointless and add a layer of negativity to the game that is unnecessary.
If you’re beating the raid, you’re doing well enough. If you’re not beating the raid, it’s probably a synergy problem and not a DPS one.
You realize your argument is actually supporting DPS meters right?
The thing is we currently have no way to accurately value a comp, we just eyeball it and use anecdotal experience to value stuff. A DPS meter can be run in a raid environment to get a rough idea of how stuff is working.
Also the comment “if you’re not beating a raid, it’s a synergy issue” is misleading. A synergy issue caused by what? Obviously the sum total of the raid members isn’t adding up, but is that because of the entire raid being generally bad, or just one bad apple? Currently we have no way to tell.
And a DPS meter isn’t going to fix either of those issues. Top-tier groups – who this tool would be aimed for – don’t and shouldn’t eyeball damage output. There’s a ton of math involved to examine the theory. Then testing. Then applying it. It only holds value when formal testing of theories is being performed, not as a means to judge who is responsible for a failing group and kick them. My guess is that pugs don’t do math very often or test new theories, and idiots often take and abuse features to measure success by arbitrary if not even blatantly incorrect means – such as AP/class/ascended stat requirements – remember when rangers got kicked from every single dungeon because they didn’t contribute enough berserker DPS? I do. Turns out they offered some of the best group damage boosting in the game, yet groups demanded more warriors and thieves because of their bigger numbers and thus “higher DPS yields” if such a system would exist.
The value of a comp is whether or not you beat the content. If you’re raiding with pugs, you take that risk, and frankly, I’d rather see it that way. If people raiding want to learn to raid properly, they fail, they do out the math, and they learn with experience and working together. This is how dungeons were at release when exotics were few and far between for the first few weeks. I remember struggling a lot with CoE in blues and greens in pug groups with no proper builds that didn’t know to stack Alpha (or recognize the merits of stacking) because such strategy hadn’t been established. Everyone died a lot. Eventually, however, people just got better and the content was beaten. You don’t need to kill the boss before phase 1 ends because of “l33t d33ps”. That’s not even the point of raids. Trivializing content by following someone else’s strategies and math defeats the point of hard content. A DPS meter only supports that ideology.
Player weapon skills can kill catas faster than ACs.
Depends on bubbles and whatnot, but yes, if given free reign, pretty much all siege melts to glassy players’ big nukes.
The logic of the DPS meter in GW2 makes no sense based on how groups work.
As it stands, an overwhelming majority of party-wide DPS comes from supportive abilities which stack damage modifiers for the rest of the party, and then simply optimizing those effects into as much of a condensed form as possible to enable either more dedicated DPS or more modifier stacking party-wide.
If you had to pick between a thief or a chronomancer, in a mutually-exclusive choice for a raid, if you’re playing properly, you take the chrono. The same is said about a druid, warrior, etc. Sorry, selfish DPS is pointless up to the point where you’re capped on big-hitter modifiers. Since meters do not measure this data, the meters themselves are pointless and add a layer of negativity to the game that is unnecessary.
If you’re beating the raid, you’re doing well enough. If you’re not beating the raid, it’s probably a synergy problem and not a DPS one.
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