Guild Wars 2

The map design doesn’t support it. Maps would need to be completely re-designed or there would need to be really finnicky no-fly-zones. As it is, we already have druids using the staff to fly into keeps off of cliffs, skipping the entire siege process.

I’d rather they fix core issues with WvW first, and potentially revert the BL’s to alpine, fix the game balance, and then maybe work on random QoL gliding changes for WvW.

Much like the revenant complaints, It’s not about P2W, it’s just the fact the concept of gliding in WvW would completely trivialize a majority of the content. Revs are just blatantly overpowered in blob fights and people are upset; the same goes regarding banners, too; the format is being trivialized, HoT content or not.

It’s all marketing. Until a third party comes out and basically verifies that the game is tanking, as long as ANet is making money and getting new players who spend money on the game, they genuinely don’t care whether or not the state of the game is good or bad.

That’s the innate advantage of subscription-based games and why the B2P model carries risks; ANet made their money as soon as people bought GW2; they could drop support entirely and there would be no economic problems for the company. A sub game on a low cost needs those numbers and thus needs to continuously produce high-quality content.

I just fear a shadowstep on OH Dagger 4 would allow s/d to get too much engage/disengage potential.

Many other classes’ weapons have niche purposes for optimal use. That said, most of these skills have general use.

Thief working with the initiative mechanic is both great and horrible for the reason that while other classes will always use their full set of skills, and skills are designed to be well-rounded and impactful, the thief needs tools that need to be both impactful but not overly-so as to prevent spamming the same skill to be a viable means of play: See Shadow Shot and Death Blossom.

Most S/D thieves use CnD intermittently. The stealth attacks on Sword are actually very strong control effects, and flickering stealth between evades is a big part of how the set plays. Just going pure stealth-less damage and evasion falls more into the lines of S/P due to interruption/evasion/CC/blind field but no way to gain stealth aside from bound on Daredevil.

Overall I think the thief’s weapons are fairly well designed. Shadow Shot’s damage is definitely over-tuned on D/P, but the set plays cohesively. Same with S/D, S/P, P/D, and to an extent, P/P. Only a few skill changes are needed on most of these sets to give them a bit more oomph. D/D suffers because ANet doesn’t seem to have an idea as to what they want the set to do, not because of trait mis-alignment or low ability potency. Because its condi and power styles play so differently, the skills feel inversely weak depending on build, and because of this, there is no room to create sound utility. Daredevil coming into the mix also really screwed this up, as now you also have things like S/P getting stealth access when it was designed not to.

P/P has been rather poor due to the mere fact it just chews through initiative to deal damage, and the rest of the kit simply has horrible coefficients for both power and condition builds – Body Shot is horrible and Vital Shot has both poor power and condition damage scaling, and the nerf to BP, while very important for D/P thief, hurt P/P a lot more than was necessary. Interruption synergy is the only thing it really has, and that falters a lot due to the ridiculous evasion/block/invuln/reflect uptime most kits have right now.

P/P offers crazy damage via unload spam, though; almost 1.5 backstabs per use. Makes more sense imho to tone down unload and buff Body Shot and the likes.

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

babazhook.6805:

Maugetarr.6823:

Deathblossom needs to have the same directional targeting that warrior’s GS #3 (whirlwind attack) has. I wouldn’t remove the bleeds till we get a true condition weapon mainhand (axe?).
Dancing Dagger needs a projectile speed increase (33%), have a 1.0 multiplier, and not bounce or cripple. When it hits it marks the target and gives you a rollover skill that’s instant cast and 2 initiative. The rollover shadowsteps you to the marked target, cripples it for 3 seconds, and removes a condition (no damage). This would let it be used in conjunction with CnD.
Cloak and Dagger needs to blind and be 5 initiative.
I think the above changes help D/D with positioning and gap closing without making the set OP. Alternatively, instead of blinding it could steal a boon if they move CiS back down to master tier.

It must be remembered off hand dagger is also used on p/d as off hand. 4 can not just help power sets. Too many are biased towards condition builds and just want to marginalize them. (not speaking about you in particular)

It also used in s/d and i do not think s/d needs another port to skill with condition removal. what purpose would #2 serve over #4 on s/d? so while your idea could work nicely for d/d p/d what of s/d? What are the ramifications of a port 2 and a port away on p/d?

Those making proposals for #4 off hand dagger have to understand there two other weaponsets to consider.

Jana suggested CC and i think that a great idea. Ie a PULl could help p/d d/d and s/d. Someone asked how s/d fights DH on point. Well here is one way. Cnd lowering INi cost AND a blind does work as this gives advantages over d/p in total ini spent to stealth.

back to 4 ,maintain the cripple and it can also help p/d (pull into caltrops field Cnd sneak attack shadowstrike) The dancing dagger will go on and hit those other enemies crippling them while the first one struck gets affected by the pull. Also great for breaking defiance bars.

Pulls are unreliable. Adding a pull to it would turn it into a Scorpion Wire making it overpowered when it did work. Giving a second port to S/D would give it the ability to chase better (assuming they ever fix the exploit on sword 2). For P/D it would give them the ability to control the range of the fight, keeping in mind that the new dancing dagger + rollover would cost 5 initiative.

Pulls are very reliable on engineer and dragonhunter.

The issue is variability here. Scorpion wire, the grasps, path of scars, etc. offer completely different pull mechanics.

DH and Engi pulls ignore terrain and always pull regardless of circumstance unless terrain negation occurs at a very specific time. The rest, the target needs to basically be stationary on a level surface, otherwise they’ll whiff.

Giving the thief a DH/Engi pull would just be way too strong on anything over like 450 range, in which case, why bother?

I do hope they never intend to “fix” S/D. Frankly, I love the set has the ability to chase or engage and reset, but not both at the same time, which can only be determined before entering combat. It makes the set a very close rival to Shortbow for open-field combat and chase potential, and any alternatives to Shortbow are long-overdue/very nice to see, and increases the skill cap and makes the decision a very important one.

Haptic Repulse.9437:

Jinx.4619:

Jana.6831:

6 k backstabs and 1-2 auto is lower than the damage we already have – just saying (lower than what other classes dish out as well). But yes, more nerfs coming in – I agree on that. but hey, thief traditionally doesn’t go past a nerf in whatever patch and there’s nothing left to nerf, so they had to buff things to carry on the tradition.

4-6k backstab on bunker build and 8-9k backstabs on zerker build
1-2 auto on bunker and maybe 3-4 on zerker build class
base from PvP
in WvW you can reach 12k-15k

correct me if im wrong

You’re wrong. Also damage is completely variable based on the opponent. And these high backstab numbers that can only be achieved through a full signet full zerker build against a light class with zerker are nowhere near indicative of the normal backstab damage. As a Thief main for 3 years I can tell you that I average, with a full zerker maraurder armor build, 8k backstabs in WvW. If i get really lucky I’ll hit a 10k on a mes with +250 power buff and I get lucky enough to crit.

If you’re running DA/CS/Tr, the above numbers are pretty accurate, frankly.

The big reduction in damage doesn’t so much come from armor but rather protection on top of high armor. Cele eles take much less than they should due to protection uptime and innate toughness bonuses. Necros have a lot of protection. Rangers auto-apply weakness and have tons of built-in mitigation and protection. Frankly, I find myself often hitting warriors and guards for more damage than I do lights and mediums from all the protection and passive mitigation they have. Thieves are absolutely the squishiest targets, and my stabs regularly without signets hit for around 12-15k. Signets on, they escalate to above 20k pretty frequently.

I’ve stabbed for 26k before in WvW and 14k in sPvP. Without signets, my stabs in WvW hover around 12-16k and in sPvP usually much lower due to the extra stress of building for durability whereas damage in WvW is a much bigger deal.

It certainly can swing wildly with build, but typically speaking, hovering in that number area is pretty normal.

A blind on CnD will not even begin to cover the disparity between the sets. CnD is weak because it doesn’t hit from all the block/invuln/blind spamming going on. Skills 3 and 4 need complete reworks on current traits, but now that D/D condi is a “thing” since HoT via the buffs to 3spam + Daredevil, nobody playing D/D can agree what needs to change, because a lot of people want to continue 3spam, and we can’t just buff Dancing Dagger so immensely. Shadow Shot is pretty much carrying D/P as well at the moment, and the buffs to BP coming in a few days could potentially justify a damage decrease.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Baba:

DeceiverX.8361

Dagger Training Should apply poison to each auto attack at a 100% chance, and just the auto. Remove the bleed from Death Blossom, and put it on Dancing Dagger. Buff Dancing Dagger’s damage by 50% and remove the ability for it to hit the same target multiple times, and just have it hit the target and up to three nearby enemies.
Death Blossom should be reworked into a multi-hit evading lunge with better range than it has now, similar to Whirlwind Attack (Warrior GS3), at the cost of an additional initiative, giving the set more mobility and stickiness to compete with D/P and some evasion and disengage potential to keep it stylized in between S/D.

Gives P/D more bleeds, shuts down D/D DB spam cheese, makes DB and Dancing Dagger better on power, gives more utility to the set overall.

Jana:

As far as DB bleed spam goes, it’s not really Daredevil or a phase. The issue lies in buffing DB’s evades so substantially. If anything, Acro is better-suited for this build when on the defensive due to better initiative restoration. I predicted this issue arising quite literally years ago, and was rejected because it was a precious buff. Look where we are, and nothing is going to really change.

Your proclamations of not being able to play D/D as you do now if a directional cast were added stem from either an unfamiliarity with directional casting and therefore slow speed of use, slow mouse movement and action speed, or simply because the skill is functionally different, in which case, yes, it would be used oh so slightly differently, because it is.

That, or the evade lunge is a fixed distance which always travels forward, like the old Death’s Charge, as to preserve the fairness and integrity of the skill and overall avoid spamming effective invuln resetting/re-positioning.

Without the added condition damage from the GM trait Lotus training the DB build can not output enough condition damage or varieties of conditions. This si why even with the added evade there few condition builds using d/d that are not also daredevil. It can work but will fare poorly. (the condi cleanse and heal off the evades that DD offers are very important to such a build)

Taking DB condition damage from the D/D set minimizes the GM trait Lotus training to the point where it all but useless. This because the only other real condition weapon would need to stay in range to maximize its effect. the P/d user would always have to stay at 300 range or less to use Impaling to any great effect. P/d uses Impaling to be sure but no where near the degree of d/d.

The major reason Impaling lotus works so well with DB builds is because DB fights at melee range so none of the Impaling can go to waste. DB evade to apply bleed also means you do not have to trait stealth in order to survive. P/d , needing stealth to get the sneak attack off will also be hindered by impaling if they dodge in stealth and it reveals them.

This makes the two sets very different from one another with both of them having very different gamestyles , advantages and disadvantages. this is a good thing.

you create a problem when you add the conditions to dancing dagger. in order to apply with safety given there no evade in dancing dagger one would have to stay at range. this would again cut into the effectiveness of Impaling Lotus GM trait forcing you to close in to use it. You do not move in towards an enemy with a condition build unless you can avoid damage or you die quickly. D/d does NOT have the instant port away that is shadowstrike.

P/d works as condition because of range and stealth. it could not survive otherwise without those two benefits. D/D works because of the evades and the fact it can get up close and use impaling, the AA for more poison and endurance gain and the DB . none of the sources of conditions “go to waste” because of the safety of range.

In essence your solution for d/d condition is to make it into an inferior ranged applicator of the same.I would Just take p/d then and use YOUR version of dancing dagger there. One build to rule them all is not diversity.

It is intended to reduce the condition damage output from an evade. The proposed buff to Dagger Training getting a 100% chance of poison on AA makes the AA quite devastating, particularly if used with say, Haste or other quickness effects. D/D condi has dealt substantial-enough damage for a while; it captured the essence of condition build design in that it was slow to ramp and would deal substantial damage over a prolonged period of time. of sustained fights ticking your foes away. The build was very niche but it was used and could be quite effective in the right hands. It’s no cele ele killer, and neither is its power counterpart, but it could sustain well in most 1v1 encounters; the pre/post-cast delays on the evasion were was really killed it due to its lack of capacity to sustain when being targeted by two or more players. That said, being focus-fired should result in death after a fairly short period of time when up against foes with a reasonable amount of skill.

Lotus Training could see its range upped to 450 as a compromise between the sets. I didn’t consider the range on LT in the scope of P/D, so I’ll concede there. I’d even be willing to go the extra mile of yielding DB extra condition coverage (not simply damage) to allow the set to ensure its DoT’s. First hit applying vuln, the second bleeding, the third torment paired with fixed-distance movement would better-justify the skill’s use and utility for condi players and power players while not just giving D/D condi damage + evasion + cleansing (at the rate similar to what Diamond Skin will be offering) via one skill. The intent is to make the condi set carry more risk (like power) but have better damage potential in the end. Poison is the best DoT the thief has, and buffs in the AA could push out solid numbers, as intended with the incoming buff to MH dagger’s damage coefficient by around 30%.

As mentioned, moving the damage to Dancing Dagger (and potentially also buffing the number of bleed stacks/poison/whatever of conditions applied, to be discussed) is intentional in its behavior. Recall that I ask for DB’s lunge distance to be increased. I think such a change would make condi D/D get dynamism in its play mechanisms; you can DB in (or steal, but the engage here is critical as it allows D/D to engage without steal, similar to D/P), using the AA chain and Lotus Training for high damage while engaged, maybe apply one or two instances of Dancing Dagger while in the fray for damage and condition spread, and disengage via DB to let the conditions tick and manage an escape, following up with Dancing Dagger at a distance to sustain ticks and maintain pressure. It’s the same “essence” of Diving → CnD → backstab → HS → AA on power, just with different skills and a different feel, while also being balanced around different potential trait line configurations. As it is, there’s an over-dependence on Daredevil and Trickery overall, and evasion-D/D condi can just run Acro/Tr/DD because the gains from DA are miniscule, and power just runs DA/Tr/DD because it’s the best. Letting condi players get extra oomph from DA and normalizing the way the whole weapon set plays a little bit and bumping its utility to better rival D/P while increasing the skill cap on the set overall seems to cover most of the important issues the set has.

you create a problem when you add the conditions to dancing dagger. in order to apply with safety given there no evade in dancing dagger one would have to stay at range. this would again cut into the effectiveness of Impaling Lotus GM trait forcing you to close in to use it. You do not move in towards an enemy with a condition build unless you can avoid damage or you die quickly. D/d does NOT have the instant port away that is shadowstrike.

Why exactly is dealing damage from safety a good thing? Power builds have no such advantage, and this is an argument about a game intending to feature competitive PvP. If you want to kill your target or bunker a point, you should feel obligated to take a risk instead of just being unkillable while doing both. It’s the reason the whole PvP format is changing with the removal of defensive amulets, and why ranged damage is meant to deal lower damage than melee. Acro/Tr/DD on a condi build shouldn’t be dealing the potential damage DA/Tr/DD is, and shouldn’t be burst-capable like berserker/marauder power running DA/Tr/DD because it can’t deal damage while evading. Dancing Dagger has a quick cast and could allow for continual use of the AA chain for endurance regen with Dancing Dagger as its primary damage for a not-melee-but-not-quite-ranged build focusing on LT and Dancing Dagger for damage and control due to cripple uptime for better synergy with Acro/Tr/DD for a sustain-oriented build, or DA/Tr/DD for a damaging one via reworked DT.

P/D bleed coverage is intended to increase because as it currently stands, Sneak Attack’s damage is horrible since bleeding was nerfed fairly substantially. One Death Blossom offers 50% more damage due to its increased duration despite offering almost half the stacks. Force a few cleanses and DB spam is better damage than what Sneak Attack can offer due to its low duration on the bleeds. Since P/D can’t get the poison access D/D can with my proposal, however, the builds balance in burst potency by giving P/D more options while at range + an AoE applicator, and double-synergy in close range when using Daredevil’s Lotus Training paired with Shadow Strike to disengage, functionally equivalent to Death Blossom, except P/D needs more initiative to perform the same damage in different means, but carries a lower risk if played on the defensive, thus giving D/D a damage favor like melee should, and D/P may depend on SA as a trait line options over DA and certainly Acrobatics (though this depends on a few factors), giving each weapon set a more unique trait configuration and style of play while increasing the potency, utility, and skill caps of the sets.

I’m willing to work with people to enhance this design ideology. D/D condi as it is right now is not healthy to D/D’s use as a set, however. Much like D/P’s Shadow Shot problem, D/D can’t advance without taking a hit somewhere in order to gain compensation and overall improvements elsewhere.

Baba:

DeceiverX.8361

Dagger Training Should apply poison to each auto attack at a 100% chance, and just the auto. Remove the bleed from Death Blossom, and put it on Dancing Dagger. Buff Dancing Dagger’s damage by 50% and remove the ability for it to hit the same target multiple times, and just have it hit the target and up to three nearby enemies.
Death Blossom should be reworked into a multi-hit evading lunge with better range than it has now, similar to Whirlwind Attack (Warrior GS3), at the cost of an additional initiative, giving the set more mobility and stickiness to compete with D/P and some evasion and disengage potential to keep it stylized in between S/D.

Gives P/D more bleeds, shuts down D/D DB spam cheese, makes DB and Dancing Dagger better on power, gives more utility to the set overall.

Jana:

As far as DB bleed spam goes, it’s not really Daredevil or a phase. The issue lies in buffing DB’s evades so substantially. If anything, Acro is better-suited for this build when on the defensive due to better initiative restoration. I predicted this issue arising quite literally years ago, and was rejected because it was a precious buff. Look where we are, and nothing is going to really change.

Your proclamations of not being able to play D/D as you do now if a directional cast were added stem from either an unfamiliarity with directional casting and therefore slow speed of use, slow mouse movement and action speed, or simply because the skill is functionally different, in which case, yes, it would be used oh so slightly differently, because it is.

That, or the evade lunge is a fixed distance which always travels forward, like the old Death’s Charge, as to preserve the fairness and integrity of the skill and overall avoid spamming effective invuln resetting/re-positioning.

I have nothing good to say about the new BL’s except they’re visually great and would make great PvE maps.

Too bad we’re not in PvE. Alpine design, please.

Jace al Thor.6745:

Does Mesmer have good burst? Yes, however, in this meta it’s pretty much useless with all the bunkers.

Considering the majority of the capacity of classes to bunker via stats is going to be removed entirely in a few days and thus burst damage is going to be innately valuable as a consequence, I don’t think this is a reasonable claim.

Alacrity was providing too much. Recall that the mesmer offers similar damage to the ranger (when power; condi ranger does quite a bit, but that issue stems from burning more than anything); the ranger was/has been preferred on the basis it provided damage bonuses to the rest of the party, not because of its personal damage output. Alacrity was such a huge bonus that a chronomancer was basically seen as a “requirement” for most content, pushing out the need of other classes into the position the mesmer was in before HoT. Moving Alacrity more in-line (potentially over-nerfed, we’ll see what happens next) with the rest of the utility other classes can provide will remove the emphasis of “requiring” a chronomancer, and it also leaves room into the future to instead buff the core mesmer over just the chronomancer as to prevent blatant power disparities between core and elite specializations.

Aside from experience with the game/class, there is none. As long as you set up a PvP build, you will have the same stats and trait capabilities as anyone else regardless of levels (HoT-only elite specializations are locked behind HoT, though).

Hell, if you know of a way to pre-emptively detect stolen cards or cards gained with fake information, don’t even bother with ANet; go talk to the credit card companies.

Pure Heart.1456:

PvP is just one big mess of explosions, knockbacks, immobilizers, and burst damage all on low cooldowns.

There is no real time to consistently plan and/or pull-off strategy. This is really sad, and frustrating.

Two words: Power Creep.

They didn’t design most elite specializations correctly in the slightest bit.

Pifil.5193:

Kattenpootjes.4291:

Just ignore it, it’s one of those clever tricks to make players use their credit cards and buy gems to convert to gold

Hardly, it would cost about $900 or so to buy that much gold. I can’t see that many people being willing to do that for some particle effects, more likely it’s TP tycoons buying and selling.

Also, the listings are from players, not from ANet.

Happens more than you think.

Previous game I played, there were several people who put $400-500 a week into in-game currency.

Doesn’t make the studio any wealthier, though. If anything, it hurts their income more when such disparities are created.

Having the same problems. While I’ve been undergoing some network jitter issues lately, the 5k+ ping spikes every few seconds are really problematic. Seems to happen earlier in the day as well, close to noon EST.

This paired with local ISP issues with higher-than-normal jitter (around 20-50ms) has lead to the game becoming completely unplayable in many respects – and I’m in NA. I’ll frequently falter between 45 ms (great) and 5k+, causing huge hanging issues which causes teleport effects to frequently fail and leave me in the same position as I started despite blowing the cooldown. Players are all over the place, and my single-targeted abilities often fail or completely miss.

vesica tempestas.1563:

SRoode.7318:

You edited as I replied. Yes, that’s my point again, are we limited at the client server end?

I believe so, and ultimately the limit is hardware at this time.

Not true at all. The problem is solely the way the engine runs, and the CPU-bounded nature of MMO games. There is room for optimization, but not to anything extreme.

Depending on how the code is written, the speed of the machine is completely irrelevant. I can write a simple recursive program that performs a very basic task which takes hours to complete versus picoseconds in other implementations. Some algorithms can’t be re-written accordingly without major complexity increases (harder to debug and much costlier to implement correctly).

As for the OP; more cores will not achieve anything in terms of performance. GW2 could run at almost identical speeds on an OC’ed pentium 4/core 2 machine given the rest of the hardware would be configured properly. DX9 doesn’t support multi-threading, so five of those cores are not being taken advantage of, and even then, multi-threaded process development can cause slowdowns depending on how the code is written, which is a relatively new and very complex task.

Anyandrell.6238:

That outfit is awesome especially for my sylvaris, but for the boots. I’d be all over it if not for the boots. It’s like wearing Uggs with an evening gown. Let me guess, a man designed it.

Anyandrell.6238:

Let me guess, a man designed it.

I don’t see what “a man designing it” has to do with anything, considering a large quantity of high-brow/upper-class fashion is designed by men.

Uggs are hideous, and they were designed by a guy, but so was pretty much all fashion throughout history. I would imagine that some element of fashion in the past few thousand years would be appreciated by you. To say hideous fashion is caused by men or that they are incapable of understanding the concept of beauty, elegance, or tasteful attire is pretty brash and quite insulting.

I think the whole outfit is ugly, and I think the boots are more reminiscent of traditional decorative Inuit footwear. Absolutely out of place, but certainly not featuring more modern lines that Ugg(lie)s do.

Thing is, it only works or really means anything when the BL is already hotly-disputed turf. Fortified structures take next to no damage from skysplitter, and rarely turf is flipped in the BL’s aside from when a small group takes the structures.

I’ve had it occur multiple instances where I’ll take half an enemy BL solo after several hours of work for the skysplitter event to begin. I move to try and take it, and usually make some progress. A few minutes in when I’m about halfway done, three havoc groups come in and do the event and prevent me from progressing. When I don’t bother doing it, progress by the enemy is a lot slower, because nobody cares so long as they’re not actively losing it. When they finish the event, all of my progress is undone, and I just move back to EBG.

Svarty.8019:

I needs to scale with the ladder ranking, because at top tier it is probably very active and hectic, whereas as the bottom it’s just 1-3 people hacking away at annoying knockdown mobs with no threat from enemies.

In T2 most people ignore it for the first several minutes, and those who complete the event are usually just solo roamers or small groups in their home BL.

Nobody likes doing it is the thing. It just shouldn’t exist.

Using currency systems from other formats like WvW or sPvP for items which have definitive or explicit means of acquisition with no mechanically-equivalent alternatives would be nice.

As in, the reward from a collection is given via item gathering in PvE, or through unique rewards achieved by capturing keep/tower lords in WvW, winning on certain professions in PvP/number of wins/rewards track items and the likes. The collection is advanced when one of them is reached, all of which should be designed with similar completion times in mind, but to cater and reward players for spending time in the game doing what they like, if only breaking from the norm in a slightly different a way.

I hate the notion of collecting almost anything. If it has no inherent use to me, I throw it away, nor will I ever care to purchase or experience it. Collections were a great idea for rewarding people who like to do that kind of stuff. Providing no alternate paths to such content was imho a poor idea.

Yargesh.4965:

Sird.4536:

Goatjugsoup.8637:

failure? i dont think it is, not from my perspective and i doubt from anets either since they are sticking to that plan of making more xpacs

it had flaws yes but what we did get was very good

If you remember a few years back they said they weren’t working on an expansion and didn’t not want to as they wanted to do more living story big patch content dumps. Well in order to make money they needed an expansion and finally made one and well it definitely feels rushed.

They did not say they were not working on an expansion. Not even close to that. They said they were not sure how they where going to release the content. The debate was whether to do so entirely through living story or through a traditional paid expansion or through a combination. They choose to do it via the traditional paid expansion route. There were people on the videos explaining various aspects of the expansion pre release who said they had been working on the content since soon after the main GW2 game released.

Not true. On numerous occasions, ANet came out and stated they were not working on an expansion and at the present had no intention on making one. If the claims of early labor explicitly for an expansion are true, then the company outright lied, and if they’re not, the company out-right lied on its scheduling. Based on how unpolished and unfinished many aspects of the expansion are, as well as completely contrary to the core game in its design, and hap-hazard elite specialization balancing and design, I think it’s fair to say ANet lied about its development time spent on the expansion in that the content was rushed. implying there were no plans for developing an expansion until fairly recently. If the expansion was polished from a design perspective, I wouldn’t argue this, but an overwhelming majority of the content provided in HoT is poorly-designed for what the game needs/needed.

LS wasn’t delivering, so the community complained to get an expansion (why, I don’t understand, I was arguing something like this would happen since the beginning). And they got one.

I see no reason why the same account couldn’t have characters with the same name, either. Frankly, from a social perspective, I think this makes more sense, as then you only have one account (primary key being account ID in the database) for whisper chat to go to, instead of having to do some kind of name-resolving through a secondary/tertiary interface to discern which account name you’re looking for in order to whisper the correct “John”.

This would probably also cut down dramatically on special character use shared by characters on the same account – There’s no need for someone making characters of the same name to make his other characters named “Jôhn”, “Jöhn”, and “Jòhn”, which could be then used by other players, while still preserving the integrity of “first-come-first-serve” on names, but potentially increasing the character name spread while not complicating the social aspects of the game.

Rauderi.8706:

Beast McDragon.1703:

Artanis.4963:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I’m not budging on “Will everyone please put on his or her jacket?” “Their” just isn’t right.

This isn’t a case where gender neutrality is needed. You really have multiple people, so pluralize “jacket”, and use “their”.

“Will everyone please put on their jackets?”

I agree, though. In those cases where you really don’t know the gender of the person you are talking to our about, using “their” is just wrong.

I disagree. English needed a third person singular neuter possessive pronoun. Several were tried and most discarded by the populace at large. “Their” was adopted. That’s the way languages work.

It’s an example of a language folding in on itself, honestly. English still needs a third person singular neuter possessive pronoun. Because “Their” is plural, regardless of how people commonly use it.

Yes, “in context,” one can establish which singular/plural version of “their” is being used, but for who use is at a singular possessive, their wrong.

Icwutudiddere. Thing is, we already have such a pronoun. “Its.” That said, the word has negative connotations when referencing people due to the way it has been used in a derogatory manner in the past. Sentence structure can also be reworked to allow for the use of “one’s” in a grammatically-correct fashion. The use of ‘their’ is strictly incorrect and is justified through means only not to offend people disassociating with a particular gender, which socially, is a relatively new idea.

I think it’s more or less the result of an obsession with being politically correct rather than following the proper constructs of the language.

Formally speaking, using ‘His or her’ isn’t perfect English. It’s a common and accepted one, but from strictly formal perspective, the use of only “his” as generalization when gender is unknown is proper.

As I said, just use S/D.

Run S/D for the long daze on the stealth attack, use BV, and auto-weakness + SoH will be plenty for a tower lord.

Staff isn’t a stealth or CC-focused weapon, nor should it be with the damage it offers.

The staff mathematically pumps out the best DPS of all of the thief weapons right now.

It may change on 1/26, but currently it offers the best. As for defiance, you let someone else in your party take care of it when it matters.

Sandrox.9524:

Petoox.6570:

Varezenem.2813:

Dagger AA is getting buffed by 30%. Sword AA will get a speed increase (30%) being stronger than rev sword AA now and acrobatics is getting some sustain improvements. Withdraw is getting the 10% heal buff that it was supposed to have.

Better than Rev sword autoattack? What are you smoking..?

Not complaining, I love the sword buffs but Rev sword auto will still be better.

http://i.imgur.com/ZON2eTT.png you won’t do this with thief sword.

after patch it wont. they nerfing rev sword dmg.

Not enough to offset the benefits from quickness and the multi-hit from rift. It’ll be close, but DPS will favor the rev.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I’m not budging on “Will everyone please put on his or her jacket?” “Their” just isn’t right.

I’m not sure about that one. ‘Their’ is for plural use and in the above statement, it would read there exists only one jacket shared by many and owned by one person of an unidentified sex.

I think what you really mean is “Will everyone please put on his or her own jacket?”

:P

Regarding the OP, it should be “Staves” for full formality with no objection regarding grammar/spelling. I can’t really say it’s bothered me, but it is one of the first things I noticed using the TP filters when they were released some time ago.

In your opinion it wouldn’t help.

In mine it would.

So then, pre-adjustment Death’s Charge, then? I think of this as a distinctive nerf versus ground-targeting, but if moving the camera in its entirety is faster than moving the cursor, sure.

Just so long as I can actually use this skill to preferred angles.

It’s really dumb when you have a cooldown-reset chronomancer with it, since those effects reduce the cooldowns of the banner skills.

It’s already dumb. Unbelievably stupid when a Chrono has one.

I’m pretty sure Maug and I have played D/D power long enough to constitute “knowing it.” Frankly, I’m pretty certain I have some of the most experience playing D/D power out of a majority of the thieves still playing GW2 and on the forums.

I still play it. I have played it every single time I’ve played my main thief since day 1 on launch. I play it in sPvP (despite not doing as well as I could because of it), in WvW, and PvE. I have not changed builds unless optimizing better for power, since, either.

And I still think directional DB would be a massive improvement. Our opinions on how the skill should activate may differ, and perhaps common ground could be reached (how I don’t know; move to/through target or forward if no target selected, similar to the first iteration of Death’s Charge?). That said, proclaiming that it would “ruin it” for power D/D makes no sense seeing as the skill would require the same amount of casting effort for condition players, even if it still was a primary bleed source.

As far as casting particularly slowly, that’s your problem. I get WWA executed faster on my warrior than I can finish a DB on my thief, and find it’s a straight-up better skill when you take the time to learn the timing on its setup and maintain your mouse accuracy by being a step ahead mentally and physically.

Again, this is why I suggest re-working it so substantially. DB 3spam can’t keep its condition damage and offer such good evasion. It’s too safe of a build. The only arguments short of a rework are either then to nerf the evade (which I agree is a poor idea) or nerf the condition damage application (which doesn’t really do much for power and just removes the purpose of condi D/D).

P/D condi was the “best” only in WvW; it didn’t depend on crits and could run dire + SA (healing and dealing damage via conditions was extremely strong) while having a very slippery kit and a lot of torment access and stealth (before torment was nerfed). It wasn’t used so much in sPvP because the stealth is a liability for losing point control and necessary for Sneak Attack’s bleed stacking and healing, and Shadow Strike would force the thief off of a point allowing for decaps. D/D condi now offers similar DoT potential due to better bleed stacking, and its lack of stealth dependency and strictly better evasion lets it bunker points better.

I don’t think DB is substantial for disengage, and it’s definitely no good for engaging. It’s a nice evade, and when paired with effects like Shadowstep, it’s reasonable, however every single other weapon set except P/P has better disengage and engage potential, and even P/P is functional if not optimal at ~900. I’m not really sure how you claim that it was useful before June, when the evade was worse. It simply lacks the land speed. You can run faster than it moves you.

That’s just pretty much how the profession is. It’s completely squishy when building for damage and overcoming that is the innate difficulty of play. There is a reason players proclaim the profession is more skill-intensive than the rest to learn how to play, and it lies pretty much entirely on its durability. You need to make sure you dodge virtually everything when it matters using weapon skills, stealth to break attack sequences/aggro, and constantly keep re-positioning to prevent your enemies from just going to town on you.

As far as damage goes, the thief does have low damage values, offset only by its traits. DA/CS/Tr is pretty standard for PvE, however DA/Tr/DD and CS/Tr/DD are also good mixes using staff, as the staff has the best damage of all of the weapons on the thief.

You can run tankier armor like Cavalier’s or Valkyrie on a few pieces to be a bit more durable if you feel you really need it, but your damage will be reduced further due to the crit frequency dropping. Look into using Invigorating Precision for your CS GM trait as well, over NQ. Again, you’ll lose damage potential, but your sustain will increase dramatically. Otherwise it’s just learning the timing and casting animations on your skills as well as all of your opponents’ skills, and making sure you manage your resources well for evasion and damage. Without video breakdown I can’t really give you any advice on where to improve, as your capacity to stay in a fight in PvE is pretty much all about how you play rather than what you play with. There’s just very little room for error and it’s something you’ll get used to in time.

Good luck!

I made an edit above regarding targeting.

It’s unlikely Daredevil will be changed for condition builds. Unless a particular skill is stupidly OP and meta-defining, ANet doesn’t usually even think about making tweaks.

Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger just need major overhauls to keep the skill needed to play the set for both power and condi variants in check while rewarding players more for using the weapon. D/D condi does horrible damage but is border-line invuln, and D/D power has consistency issues and can’t escape or maintain presence on an escaping enemy. These are two huge problems which D/P and S/x are strictly better at doing.

The targeting is fine as it is for the range the skill covers. If DB was given a 900 range evade, though, I’d prefer ground targeting; if you’ve ever played a GS warrior, Rush is very inconsistent and in many instances I wish I could have it be ground-targeted. It’s just to help solve pathing issues.

There have always been DB-spam players, but DB spam was easily-countered due to the pre/post-cast animations not giving evasion. Now that the evasion is seamless, it’s a very easy and quite a bit more effective, particularly now that DD offers more condition damage and more evasion uptime, too.

Hybrid sets don’t work when the potency doesn’t come from traits. I don’t know why people keep trying to push for weapons to have hybrid damage innately and no traits to support either build type. Additionally, D/D isn’t really a good hybrid. It has one skill to apply DoT conditions, and only applies one type. Its poison on AA is laughable, and Dagger Training and Potent Poison are just better ignored on D/D 3spam for Acrobatics for a very superior DD trait setup in regards to DoT ticks and evasion uptime.

The quickness on Rev will make it keep hitting harder in longer fights. That said, without permanent quickness on the rev, the thief sword AA will have the best AA DPS in the game as of what is known now (staff likely will be better, though, because powercreep in HoT). It already does better than D/x on the AA and has huge coefficients per hit, rivaling the Revenant and dealing more damage on its last hit in the chain than the Rev can offer per hit.

Eval.2371:

If any of you complainers actually played a ranger you would understand how dire and needed those two pets are. Yes they do high damage when traited they are supposed to be. Why is it these two pets are such a problem? Well they are are the only pets that can actually hit a moving target. They are the only pets that actually make our low coefficient trade offs worth while for having the pets.

As tragic said, I am well in favor for nerfs to those two pets IF we receive significant coefficient increases on our weapons because frankly right now the only way to burst, or be competitive with the other classes is with these pets.

DeceiverX.8361:

Except it doesn’t. I frequently take 1-2k damage hits per missile in WvW.

You run valk thief
/15 chars

coax.2951:

Substance E.4852:

DeceiverX.8361:

Except it doesn’t. I frequently take 1-2k damage hits per missile in WvW.

Ya that happens when you apparently run base toughness. Shocking as it may be.

God forbid he get’s Rapidfire’d for even more damage on a shorter cooldown. Nerf that one too please, ranger damage is clearly OP.

Lol so we have one skill that has a half decent coefficient and only if we get the full channel same deal with the pet. One skill and a pet. It’s the end of the world. Yet we have classes that have solid skills across their entire kit that are all 2+ coefficients.

Ohai a guildmember! :P

Spike Barrage really is excessive, though. It’s an effective 17.0 damage coefficient on a 15s cooldown at 1500 range (projectile physics). DPS-wise, it’s not much lower than CoR spam as it currently is on the 2s cooldown. Not to mention this is ignoring what the ranger has entirely, and that pet attributes do not scale with player stats. That’s completely absurd. The smokescale is annoying, but reasonable. The Bristleback, though, is in no way a reasonable pet for how innately durable it is + the mitigation/burst prevention to pets that the ranger/druid can offer.

And I’m totally okay with base ranger abilities getting upped substantially at this cost. Actually, I’d prefer it that way, and it’s what I proposed on the CDI quite some time ago. RF is about five times weaker than Spike Barrage. I can facetank an RF if I really want to and live. A ranger dealing huge damage via RF is also going to be glassy, wheres a tankier BM ranger doesn’t need to be.

I’d prefer the ranger and its pets to see more definitive splits based on trait allocation, and see meaningful traits for offense and defense pushed into BM instead of just hyper-inflating stats or scaling on pet abilities. Right now pet defenses are insane, and the utility of the pet is measured pretty much entirely by its damage output/skill coefficients or f2 skill’s utility. With tons of mitigation and high coefficients/better reliability, focusing the pet isn’t a valid strategy, and neither is really focusing the ranger/druid if they build for pet support. Further, I’d also like to see a lot of pets buffed – particularly birds – because unless you’re using the HoT pets, you’re strictly out-gunned, and a lot of the pets in regards to their animations and effects really are rather pointless/underwhelming.

Hexalot.8194:

Crapgame.6519:

Camelot Unchained baby. If you haven’t blown this popsicle stand by then, you will once your friends tell you about it.

Blow this popsicle stand for an MMO that has stated it will be going the monthly subscription route ?

LOL… I don’t blame anyone deciding to jump ship if they’ve had enough (game mode is indeed in it’s death throes), but hell if I’m going back to that obsolete format.

I usually spend that much or more in the cash shop each month on games I enjoy. Frankly, if I can be promised a better game, I don’t really care how I need to pay for it, so long as It’s enjoyable for the amount I’m spending on it.

If the subscription game stops being enjoyable, you just stop subscribing. Simple as that.

If you’re succeeding 2v1, blowing cooldowns, dodges, etc. for the 2v1, and someone comes in for a gank and kills you, then you lost fairly.

I don’t know what to tell you other than to react faster and pay attention to the map more if you can’t handle getting jumped as it is.

Except it doesn’t. I frequently take 1-2k damage hits per missile in WvW.

Shadelang.3012:

What the bristleback needs isn’t a nerf. It needs the artificial survivability granted to it by bark skin reduced.
…

TLDR; The bristleback itself isn’t OP. It has low enough defensive stats that killing it SHOULD be an option just as all dangerous pets are meant to have (Like cats). However druid synergy with the WK trait bark skin makes that very difficult.
…
Where it SHOULD be possible to break that machine as part of an opposing players strategy.

Id reccomend reworking bark skin to a different mechanic. And putting its defensive functionality on an active utility skill. Such as Guard which has needed a strong rework for a very long time.

This right here is a genuinely good and reasonable idea.

A trait setup like mine, which should be very capable of deleting a pet if focused, is making the pet next to impossible to kill. For some perspective in WvW, my thief has 20k HP (+9k over baseline), 4k power (yes, 4k; I am one of if not the single hardest-hitting thieves in the game) and 241 crit damage, stacked on an additional 65% extra damage modifiers.

And I cannot kill a bristleback before it kills me because of this trait and druid’s synergy with BM. I am well-aware that the strategy against such a ranger/druid should be to kill the pet in this case before the ranger/druid, because swap has a long cooldown and you can’t double-up on the same pet. That said, it’s so difficult to do from this trait, even when pushing stats into complete absurdity, that it makes the pet seem way stronger than it really is. The HoT pets are responsive and offer a solid companion unlike many others. Traits just are pushing their solid damage and utility into absurdity by making killing them or the ranger an ultimatum which leads no really good solution for players that simply can’t eat the F2.

Cobrakon.3108:

Spartacus.3192:

Padd.1479:

I really hope not all those people who complained about thief and switched classes come back now… Wouldnt like matches full of thieves at all.

I’ll give you one guess what all those Eles and Mesmers are gonna reroll to…..

Guys Guys Guys Thief has always been the highest skill requirement for a class. They might try to reroll thief but they will get rekt and have no choice but to keep complaining about thieves.

What does concern me is Thief vs Thief lasting 2 seconds lol.

It already does assuming one is better than the other.

If it’s a balanced match, the fights will extend longer (unless one lags, but that’s a whole other issue with teleports and latency issues :P). The unskilled ones I play against die in under a second. The skilled ones will fight tooth and nail for what can be minutes on end.

Maugetarr.6823:

The only thing that could be nerfed on shadowshot is the damage. The argument could (and has) been made that the damage is too high for the utility.

Which is the exact thing I said initially and is also the premise for this thread as well.

Again, people will hold onto their spammy play which trivializes the rest of the class in whatever way they can, justifying it as being the only way to be competitive, when in all reality this competitive nature is the result of what are skills which objectively over-perform.

Balancing at peak performance is important; otherwise you would be able to justify buffing elementalist’s durability because on anything other than D/D cele it does not sustain well at all. The same notion is applicable to this thread in that one particular facet of the class is arguably holding back the rest from being bumped upwards. The elementalist’s viability is going to crash with the removal of the celestial amulet, but the whole profession will be able to be buffed into the future and balanced better from a design perspective. The thief, as well as many other classes, is in the same predicament.

People are too self-obsessed with being “competitive” to realize that such attitude is what is trivializing the game’s balance decisions and is what leads to balance inequities to existing for extended periods of time to begin with.

Maugetarr.6823:

Deathblossom needs to have the same directional targeting that warrior’s GS #3 (whirlwind attack) has. I wouldn’t remove the bleeds till we get a true condition weapon mainhand (axe?).
Dancing Dagger needs a projectile speed increase (33%), have a 1.0 multiplier, and not bounce or cripple. When it hits it marks the target and gives you a rollover skill that’s instant cast and 2 initiative. The rollover shadowsteps you to the marked target, cripples it for 3 seconds, and removes a condition (no damage). This would let it be used in conjunction with CnD.
Cloak and Dagger needs to blind and be 5 initiative.
I think the above changes help D/D with positioning and gap closing without making the set OP or needing to nerf D/P, although Shadowshot could have its damage reduced.

I proposed a similar idea to distribute condi use into P/D better, take out the safety that is D/D condi evasion cheese to make it a real build, and bump the stickiness on D/D overall for power builds while resolving the core issues with Dancing Dagger’s low base damage and high scaling potential on power builds, as seen below:

DeceiverX.8361:

This is kind of where they were trying to push DT. The problem is that it can’t be 100% the way it is now, because then Death Blossom spam would be completely absurd dealing 3 bleed and 3 poison.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Dagger Training Should apply poison to each auto attack at a 100% chance, and just the auto. Remove the bleed from Death Blossom, and put it on Dancing Dagger. Buff Dancing Dagger’s damage by 50% and remove the ability for it to hit the same target multiple times, and just have it hit the target and up to three nearby enemies.
Death Blossom should be reworked into a multi-hit evading lunge with better range than it has now, similar to Whirlwind Attack (Warrior GS3), at the cost of an additional initiative, giving the set more mobility and stickiness to compete with D/P and some evasion and disengage potential to keep it stylized in between S/D.

This improves power D/D through a better evade and more useful and consistent Dancing Dagger, and lets condi D/x get better and more reliable condition application while increasing the skill cap and not making it overwhelming with DD.

It was rejected in length by a D/D condi player because “death blossom spam is fun and requires skill to time” (lol), that “death blossom should not require more skill than an evade” (lol) and “combo finishers on multiple bounces from Dancing Dagger are very useful” (lol).

There’s going to be resistance as long as the class requires more than two buttons to play or requires some amount of intellect, even if such proposals lead to net buffs. In the case of what someone mentioned above, he proclaimed D/P required more skill than D/D, which is either completely untrue in the case of power, or just as spammy and bad-friendly in the case of conditions.

It irks me sPvP has gotten people so competitive and so upset about balance due to the massive imbalance of the game that we’re left with mostly FoTM players who aren’t willing to make balance compromises and reward skillful play while punishing bad play; instead they just want to be overpowered for free wins for no legitimate reason.

The thief has more baseline damage modifiers than the revenant, apharma. Devastation and Critical Strikes offset each other. DA and Trickery favors the thief’s damage substantially, or even more extreme, DA and DD as additional trait lines. I think the only real advantage is the Revenant’s consistency with the innate 100% crit rate which the thief simply can’t achieve.

Again, since the thief only has damage, ANet’s philosophy, mentioned in the live stream is that they want that damage to be very potent and what the class can excel at. Is this poor design? Yes. But so was pigeon-holing the thief, and so was extending ridiculous utility to classes and builds that frankly didn’t need it otherwise and giving no similar alternatives to other classes, and then balancing the new content around such design. PvE will always have a meta leaving out a class or group of classes. Mesmer was out before, and thief is out now. It’s either optimal or it isn’t, and nothing except excluding more classes is going to change that.

As a side-note, they’re also buffing the staff for the thief in terms of its damage, which is also already the thief’s best DPS tool. Again, the ideology behind these changes seems to stem entirely from PvE balance.

Why they’re bringing these balance decisions into the game under the declaration of PvP balance makes no sense.

Again, whether or not they over-nerfed the mesmer, I don’t know, and I honestly think it’s too early to tell. Even small changes to big skills can have profound impacts, and ANet hasn’t given us the full list of changes yet, and we really don’t know where the meta is headed until people start winning with specific builds or classes to a consistent degree. Remember when D/D thief was “the big scare”? It really hasn’t changed much, and the numbers tweaks haven’t been substantial enough to cause it to phase out; it’s the design of the class within the confines of how people are playing that has.

My mesmer play is rather infrequent and very far from the apex of my own personal skill and knowledge compared to other classes. I know the class and its skills and combos, but can’t play it to magnificent skill levels. I’m going by what I foresee happening from analysis of game design.

Dagger autos already had very high damage coefficients. Actually, the MH sword on the thief was already quite amazing, and only wasn’t used in speed clears because of backstab for > 50% and HS spam for < 50%. Autos alone, the sword is extremely devastating; I’ve personally crit 10k on the final hit in WvW. My AA in WvW with MH dagger depending on might already gets to 6k+ usually. Frankly, it’s not the AA damage but the skills that needed genuine improvement, particularly on other weapon sets. Dancing Dagger does half the damage of thief MH dagger’s slowest AA. Death Blossom is pitiful for anything but condi 3spam thief. Body Shot is pretty much the worst skill in the game. CnD has reliability problems. Pistol Whip’s pre-cast is horribly long, and even Larcenous Strike has a pretty awful casting animation.

It’s for this reason I think they buffed/nerfed for PvE and not PvP at all. Rev sword AA is pretty much the same strength as thief’s is now. It’s just the permanent quickness that got out of control. Since the thief brings no utility to PvE, they realized it needed to deal better damage, so they nerfed Rev sword and buffed thief AA to keep it in line. Of course, this has very big effects on PvP and didn’t resolve the fundamental issues with the class causing it to have problems to begin with.