Guild Wars 2

Not like it’s pretty much agreed upon that vault and BD are overtuned in their damage and the rest of the staff and the entirety of the thief is horrible or anything…

Do you really think they even look at the WvW metrics?

Nothing is changing. I’m hoping to find another game soon enough.

Made for bruising as it offers a mathematically optimal ratio of damage : defense (aside from dire gear, but that stuff is just OP and came into the game later).

If you’re tanking in raids, from what I understand you’re going to need three defensive stats.

I ran a pretty similar build for a while using CS/Acro/Tr. Trickery is a reasonable pick on p/p due to the endurance gain, and DD is very evasive so be able to recover the distance easily.

I’d recommend not using Assassin’s Signet and instead using Shadowstep. You’ll want the extra stunbreak/teleport/cleanse, for all three aspects of the skill work amazingly on P/P; stunbreak to save RFI if you think you’ll be dumping initiative, teleport as a way to reset distance… twice, burst condition cleansing is a weakness of a build without SA as you’ll find yourself cleansing cover conditions frequently and not the intended DoT’s.

I would still advise BV over dagger storm for cooldown reasons (It’s CC that works with range and synergizes nicely to land unloads), but that’s pretty matchup-dependent.

PopeUrban.2578:

If it’s that easy, move to north america and pay your rent with all that easy money. problem solved, you’re now a successful E-Athlete and the envy of the twelve spectators in the world that care about GW2 pro leagues.

/thread.

Well-played.

Reknarok.7582:

the elite specs shouldnt have been a flat and obvious upgrade to the class like reaper

As for the chrono and DH, I can’t really speak for the chronomancer and there are some tweaks that need to be made I think (ToT ignoring/removing all stability/cannot be immediately stunbroken), but it doesn’t seem too too much better when you isolate issues like those. DH is definitely an overdone upgrade, though.

I’d argue the base necro only does poorly relative to the reaper because it lacks stability.

Single-target kill-speed hands down by a massive margin goes to base necro over the reaper, as well as being more durable and consistent against both incoming raw damage and conditions.

It’s pretty much entirely a question of stability for the base necro at this point.

The big issue with client-side computation is abusing the nature of it to hack it for an advantage elsewhere in the game. The limited-access aspect of gliding is also likely causing an issue with packet loss less so than high latency, for a check needs to be made if you’re in the correct world region that allows it (or so how I imagine implementation works).

Otherwise they may just have all of the computation done server-side for the sake of hacking prevention on gliding to prevent abuse. I’m not really sure, though. The client should send a signal stating that you activated the gliding effect at a certain position and check if that position is valid for a gliding, and thus you should be sent up, anyways. That’s effectively the whole premise of rubber-banding, as the client and server are extrapolating where your character should be based on the criteria of actions performed, and those actions are conflicting with actual submitted data, so it instantly attempts to correct itself.

I agree that there’s a lot of CC. And partially that stability is under-tuned.

The big problem is that there’s too much CC and stability on the same classes and weapons, and not enough diversity between where it’s accessible and where it isn’t.

Even with adjustments, though, I don’t think much would change. There’s also a lot of really short-cooldown AOE-boon-stripping, and boons themselves are so incredibly strong that a few good strips can predetermine the outcome of a fight.

While giving every stunbreak stability is likely too much, giving a select few, notably the higher-cooldown ones some short-duration-crazy-amount of stability would definitely change things up a bit. A preemptive stunbreak use for 1s of 25 stacks of stability on very specific skills across all of the classes (or something along those lines) could massively impact how fights are approached and how to coordinate an assault, for it also ups the skill cap by making people use their abilities intelligently at the right time, rather than just stacking up for boons and pressing a standard rotation through the enemy blob.

The casino analogy is slightly different, though.

The casino uses that cash to keep itself funded; it needs to pay for its utilities, prizes, and so on. A lot of money will both circulate in and out depending on the games played. Blackjack against the house is rarely as profitable as the slots from the casino’s point of view, despite the higher denominations of the blackjack games, as especially at the higher-pay tables, more… experienced players are attracted, if you catch my drift

As such, there needs to be a distinct statistic to make sure the house wins a disproportionate amount of times.

In regards to the conversion of virtual currency and game operations, as long as there’s enough money funneling into the system to pay the utilities, it doesn’t matter. There’s zero chance of directly losing money, or not gaining profits because for each person losing, someone else is winning. In the case of item generation, as long as someone buys the keys, the company wins. It doesn’t matter how much artificial value they get. They’re after the fancy skin in the box, and that acquisition is pretty much totally absolute. The only sense of “value” is that of the in-game economy or the capacity and willingness for other players to purchase the items second-hand. Thing is, no matter how common or uncommon they are, ANet’s made their money as long as the drop rate reflects the expected number of chest purchases. Gold values will depend entirely on the number of these purchases and rates of acquisition.

Keeping the price of the keys high or even making the drop rate so low may ultimately negatively impact ANet’s profits, for lower prices and higher rates would make more people, like the OP, keep buying keys. The TP flipper will get the skins, anyways, and the higher the real-money price, the less willing players will be to support the micro-transaction model.

And if the drops become more common such that gold prices somehow drop enough to notice (I can tell you BLC skin rate won’t do this), gold de-values, which also helps drive gem sales through people purchasing gold via gems for every other purchase (legendaries, server transfers, services, etc., which are bigger drivers for gold buying)

Pricing on BLC’s likely needs some adjustments depending on the metric data possessed. The mechanics, contents, and drop rates of certain items have changed a lot over the past few years, but the price hasn’t. I refuse to believe that chests are mathematically balanced properly to bring the best return for the price based on the sheer number of people willing to have spent hours farming keys on alts and still buying gems for other things, and how few people buy keys in general/claim they are ripoffs relative to the number of people who do, and how many they also buy.

Ehra.5240:

… it just makes Anet look like they’re not confident enough in their product for it to sell without resorting to underhanded practices like this…

And based on the expansion contents alone that did not have some kind of impact on the base game (loot nerfs, WvW mode changes, etc.), if you were releasing this product, would you have any kind of confidence in the product?

I know for kitten ed sure I wouldn’t. Putting the content delivered behind the cost it’s priced… it’s almost an insult to the original developer efforts of the base game, as though that kind of content should be treated as sub-par or the new content as being so much better, when in all honesty, we paid for a few new skills, grindy mechanics, almost no new skins, and some cool maps that lead to some enjoyment before getting bored of staring at the same locations.

ANet had to change existing systems drastically to make sure they could hype the release as a big deal when in reality the explicitly new experience is almost minimal.

It also gives them an excuse to not release new content while “tweaking” and iterating over clearly-flawed design, further cutting costs and capitalizing on screwing over their customers.

This is why we need crossbows

On the one hand it’s good to stop grieving.

On the other, legitimate network issues cause unintended side effects.

That said, if one is frequently having network problems, and not absolutely everyone nearby is having those same problems, it’s likely not ANet’s fault, and one shouldn’t try to play competitively when undergoing network problems.

If I can think of one rule, it’d be that one doesn’t get punished when D/C’ing in a premade 5’s match; you’re certainly not going to grief your premade 5 team/friends, and there’s really not a way to grief opponents by letting them win easier :P

Misguided.5139:

Changing stats on ascended gear is rather cheap, unless you have expensive runes.

Runes are the cheap part.

The 1200g+ cost of versatile infusions is what makes it dumb to even consider re-statting armor for some people.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

So we spent a good 30 minutes or more pushing and pulling Sorrow’s Furnace until they overcame us.

Was fun stuff last night; shame SF’s presence is almost entirely on one guild raiding. Dat EBay blob, though. I don’t even know where they get their numbers or how they can sardine themselves in a single map like that ._.

But yea, while I think the OP is on to something in regards to the general appeal of WvW not promoting rewards to really get players pushing to take objectives or defend, this is a competitive game mode, and WvW is meant to be even more brutal in regards to capitalizing on the enemy when given the chance.

It should be about fights one way or another, but striking the balance between rewarding combat/assaulting and defending is difficult. Otherwise you have servers like YB that are pretty much well-disliked among the WvW community which just turtle structures and build defensive siege for hours on end while not really ever engaging the enemy.

SB was enough for me, but the buggers are quite difficult for the class. I’d recommend trying S/P as well due to the cleave and evades.

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

While I mostly disagree with your stance on stealth and SA involving thinking, I couldn’t agree more with this statement.

I have repeatedly asked for Death Blossom to be made into a completely different skill, because just upping damage or evade frame duration I knew would have left us in this position: spam a skill and win the fight.

My same thoughts regarding Shadow Shot; I’ve lost quite a few matches against other thieves while playing D/D. I equip and offhand pistol in a rematch, press 3 a few times, and usually win without taking hits. The coefficient is so high, the initiative cost so low, and with built-in mitigation, there’s no real reason to do anything else.

DB works on skilled players, though. In fights I lost playing backstab with in some friendly 1v1’s with what I’d call very skilled guildmembers, I was fairly successful in rematching them using DB. On a power/crit build. The evasion is enormous and is exactly what I feared would become of DB given increased evade frames: an easy-to-win-with condi spam build.

Yay Deceiver agreed with me for once.
Even with SA one still needed to think as D/D still has got no utility.
This thread derailed with the first answer and by watching that video: It was always just Death Blossom, no matter the situation, no matter the opponent.
I like Death Blossom as it is, I just don’t see how spamming one skill against people who yet have to figure out their new classes should be an argument against someone asking for other thief sets to be viable again – and that’s why I argued.

ETA: DB as it is is fine – Daredevil is much worse when it comes to evades – maybe you should do a review on that?

In my case, it wasn’t inexperienced/clueless players, though. I was using D/D baseline thief and for the most part, it was against a myriad of more classic builds.

Granted, I still didn’t beat “meta” builds in sPvP regularly enough to claim it as an instant-win, but it was easy enough with such substantial rewards that I saw pretty substantial improvements pretty much pressing the button whenever I wanted to, and was not using the benefits of the DD line at the time. Overall I fared better than what was normal for me playing the backstab build I normally do, and playing D/P didn’t change very much in regards to “on point” combat.

DrD is weird. It’s fair and isn’t. The coefficients on Vault and BD are too high (especially in WvW after testing, dealing 7k+ damage per dodge is a bit of an issue), however the gains from the rest of the specialization line are extremely underwhelming, and the staff itself seems almost useless outside of vault-spamming.
Daredevil pretty much needs a conceptual redesign as it adds very little to the class in regards to a playstyle point of view and trivializes the thief as a whole while expounding upon the notion that the class suffers from core design philosophies and is only kept afloat by a few extremely powerful gimmicks that when countered render the underlying class schemes as unsuitable for a plethora of different situations done objectively better by other classes.

Eh?
/characters
/“flood control” for complaining about HoT

Jana.6831:

reinforever.8902:

Actually no, I’ve had luck with it against skilled players in wvw and pvp alike. Usually takes at least 2 people to kill me with some exceptions. The sustained dmg from death blossom and the condi dodge from DD make it have impressive dps potential. That mixed with evades + more defensive stats (condi dmg only needs one stat unlike power prec ferocity) make it extremely hard to kill.

If your idea of “skillfull play” is to smash one button, then the new meta is for you, yes.
I don’t want this though – I want to think.

While I mostly disagree with your stance on stealth and SA involving thinking, I couldn’t agree more with this statement.

I have repeatedly asked for Death Blossom to be made into a completely different skill, because just upping damage or evade frame duration I knew would have left us in this position: spam a skill and win the fight.

My same thoughts regarding Shadow Shot; I’ve lost quite a few matches against other thieves while playing D/D. I equip and offhand pistol in a rematch, press 3 a few times, and usually win without taking hits. The coefficient is so high, the initiative cost so low, and with built-in mitigation, there’s no real reason to do anything else.

DB works on skilled players, though. In fights I lost playing backstab with in some friendly 1v1’s with what I’d call very skilled guildmembers, I was fairly successful in rematching them using DB. On a power/crit build. The evasion is enormous and is exactly what I feared would become of DB given increased evade frames: an easy-to-win-with condi spam build.

I’ve been slowly coming up with something for a while as a suggestion and challenge to Karl – design something cool. I don’t think I’ll ever get around to writing in and balancing the damage coefficients, but I’m done with the design and premise and skills, and just need to finish traits.

Yea, if the target audience is for those like Mithran, I’m finding another game.

I came for the fighting of other players and stayed for the fighting of other players.

And I am definitely considering leaving because of the lack of fighting of other players.
BL’s are dead. Half my server quit the format altogether and many of those quit the game. What was 24/7 action with reasonable player counts, amazing havoc and meaningful fights has turned into our enemies blobbing EBG and us getting crushed because nobody finds fun harassing the new BL’s which is what our server (and my guild) did to get fights, disperse enemy forces, and win outnumbered.

Now it’s just a complete joke and the community is completely fractured.

Olba.5376:

RubberDougie.2750:

They also can’t tell a Dynamic Event to skip to the next step because it is holding up people that need it to access Living Story Season 2 content.

Yeah, that is most likely in the dev console, not GM access.

Also, manipulating events for players is not something GMs are supposed to do.

Not necessarily true. Depends on the tier of support you’re in.

It also depends on the game’s internal support structures.

The game I worked as a GM in a while ago had software that would allow for some minor world alterations. Larger-scale bugs from systems problems may or may not have been solvable. There was a display and sorting problem for inventories that lead to a loss of item accessibility, and even on the GM panel these couldn’t be recovered; the issue had to be resolved by the UI and database teams.

GM panels usually just have the ability to alter character inventories, spawn entities (items, monsters), alter the location of players, and alter the location of the GM’s character, among similar minor tasks. Usually these just inherit from existing systems, such as teleporting players to a GM, but the GM inheriting the properties of a WP as flesh would mentioned as a problem that couldn’t be solved.

Changing something like a dynamic event may be well beyond the reach of a normal GM depending on the architecture of the events and their integration with support tools software. I recall having to do quite a few workarounds or tell players to modify files client-side to solve problems that were beyond what was integrated in the GM tools package.

Consequently, support tiers will have different tools; my boss, for example, had a higher-tier of usable tools to work with; including customizable items (in a game that did not have these) and simply breaking the “rules” of the game involving some rather special DB queries made exclusively for this reason.

ANet’s support is pretty solid, so if the bug is an account-only problem, they’ll likely be more than willing to help and can resolve it. If there’s a bigger problem behind the scenes, they may not know how to fix it and/or cannot without the problem solved by one of the programmers.

Phoenix the One.4071:

Maybe toughness is bugged.. Well puttinh higher CD is kittentated CD is so clumsy on Rev when we already manage Legendary CD and energy upkeep. We should be more like thief.

Toughness isn’t bugged. Fact of the matter is that most of the new skills released have extremely high coefficients and new traits only ramp them further.

Backstab is notorious for hitting for lots of damage. Fact of the matter is that it’s now not really that strong compared to the new skills.

Example being that CoR’s damage values are higher than backstab. UA on a single target is the equivalent of two backstabs. Gun Flame’s damage is higher than backstab and Berserker alone gives almost 30% more damage modifiers. Gravedigger is a better coefficient than backstab. True Shot is almost 10% better than a backstab.

Consequently, what made stab really hit hard was also a lot of damage modifiers coming into play a pure damage build. A lot of the specs offer similar if not better damage modifiers than what would constitute a “meta” thief build. On the revenant, it’s extremely so.

This skill’s big balance problem is WvW. A huge number of enemies all using this ability wipes massive groups of players instantly at choke points. There’s no point in building siege because CoR does it better. CoR even does better damage than Barrage, which was previously the highest-hitting skill in the game assuming the targets stayed in the field and did not dodge or attempt to mitigate the damage in any way. UA also does more damage, and Barrage has a huge channel/spread damage and more hits to proc retal off of which could easily drop the ranger.

30 second cooldown healing disengage is awesome. This is the same as occupying a utility slot or a weapon dedicated to movement for every other class, and in almost all instances, the cooldown of WoR is the same or lower than these other-class alternatives for just the movement alone. The healing is already pushing for what would be a 10-15 second utility or heal.

Ranger LB, thief shortbow, warrior rifle, warrior longbow, untraited mesmer GS, engineer rifle, necro staff, 3/4 ele staff attunement autos (fire/air/water), and rev hammer do not have conditions applied on their auto-attacks… I.E. no 1200 range weapon in the game does baseline. Getting burning every few hits innately (across the use of all skills, too) is still objectively better than every other 1200 ranged option’s auto for condition pressure. Hell, the DH even gets a cripple attached to it for hitting more enemies to maintain permanent cripple uptime.

The bow also has objectively better damage and utility than the ranger’s longbow and the thief’s shortbow, and almost all of their benefits combined.

The push trait when combined with proper trap use should and will kill any squishy, sticky target. A thief engages? Drop maw and auto them into it. They’re CC-locked now and slowed and can only remove it by using abilities that would cause them to be CC’ed again from the trap.

All traps can be dodged, and DH’s traps still punish players for dodging them, unlike every other trap, through secondary effects.

Not really sure where the OP’s coming from on a lot of these.

Chill-condi reaper is pretty dang strong, but I don’t think Spiral and Scythe need cooldowns bumped up; auto-attacking is pretty boring, and it’s not like there’s a weapon swap within shroud to keep doing things; consider playing necro with just a staff and no swaps; the high-impact skills are on high cooldowns and the rest just feels mediocre, and autoing isn’t very engaging. I can only get behind the DC reduction by 16%.

Power reaper is viable, but I’d argue power base necro running Spite/DM/SR is a better killer. Reaper’s just a lot more consistent and imho considerably more fun (but I wasn’t a fan of base necro because of its slowness to begin with) :P

Vital Persistence doesn’t really need changing like that.

To give base necro the consistency it needs to be relevant in the PvP scene, it just needs more stability access. Necromancers can deal with being focused fairly well from a damage perspective due to their durability, but suffer from being locked out of play. Reaper changes this dynamic by allowing for that durability to keep them in a fight while being able to retaliate. Reduce cooldowns on DS4 and DS5 to 35, DS4 getting a few stacks of stability at the beginning of the cast (and I do mean a few, like 3 or 4), and putting DS2 on a stunbreak would probably do wonders.

I don’t really think the reaper is overpowered so much that it’s giving the illusion it is because of its consistency and capacity to take on different targets with pretty decent success while in shroud. Boon stealing, CC-locking, and playing with disabling conditions are very solid ways to play against RS, and the greatsword, while odd, I think has a learning curve that’s fair for both the reaper and the opponent; putting too much consistency on grasping darkness would remove both the skill needed to use it properly as well as remove the ability for opponents to out-maneuver the reaper’s long-choreographed skills. I haven’t experienced a bug yet in charge unless the opponent is lagging heavily or uses a teleport skill, which is fine. Unless there’s a bug like before where it’s still causing people to go backwards (I haven’t experienced anything odd yet if there is, nor has anyone in my guild), I don’t necessarily agree this should be classified as a “bug” and/or changed.

The QoL for seeing utilities in shroud would be really, really nice, though.

Klonko.8341:

How am I suppose to play vs a DH as a thief? I would post on the thief forum but… They would shout NERF THEM out loud (I’m not against that tough… DH is kinda imbalanced imho)!!!!! Any tips to give? Does anything from a thief irritate you?

My concern atm is daze on trap, It’s hard to retaliate when you go in and instantly get daze + take 1/4 of your hp in one trap :S

You run. Against incompetent ones you can win, but against fairly decent players, you’re better off just admitting the loss and not bothering.

Almost everything the DH has is a direct counter and is literally a better equivalent to your own skills. Guards could have once been baited into using CD’s, and their low mobility played against them and rewarded a good thief with positioning and going in and out of their range, but wings gives them the extra push they need at half the cooldown of SS to really have them struggle, and the longbow gives them an extremely powerful ranged option which is blatantly superior to kiting with shortbow, and several of the skills ignore terrain. The CC brought on is too much to evade and having no stability pretty much puts you at an immediate loss once you get caught up to after needing to blow your own cooldowns.

Best results I’ve had have been S/D Acro/Trickery/DD, but it’s pretty much an inevitable loss.

Biggest issue I have with it is the mobility and limited counterplay options. Wings of Resolve and JI make the class arguably better at distance engagement than thieves and mesmers/elementalists, which is a bit troubling considering the burst damage being objectively better than say, backstab, and on what’s pretty much an identical cooldown, except at 1200 range, while still bringing tons of group support and durability. The over-the-top traps and their massive radii and powerful effects make the class very difficult to approach and attempt to contest a point.

Rev is simply better at sustaining and thus used more heavily in competitive teams, as strictly speaking the meta comes from not losing a point more than the capacity to capture them.

DH is overly-punishing to play against when not playing an optimized “meta” build well, or a build without a lot of matching durability and stability, and brings enough of everything to a team to make them highly desirable in pretty much any situation.

When it is countered by an equally-durable/bunker-esque build often found in the upper echelons of play, it is fair. The problem is that when paired against anything but this kind of build, it completely dominates and skilled play attempts are futile due to its high adaptability and fairly potent capabilities in almost any given situation other than sustained mobility or disablement towards other boon-based builds.

Reroll.

Anything but D/P decap pretty much has no chance against competent players, and that’s extremely difficult with the mobility granted to everyone else via their elite specs.

There’s too much AOE burst and mitigation/invuln right now to really play the class effectively in the current meta.

It seems I misinterpret the OP.

I thought the OP was asking to merge the maps together into one big map, instead.
If by stating “one big map,” he’s solely bumping the player count, my apologies.

Just doubling the allowable players in EB wouldn’t really do much to solve core problems with WvW, though. The return of the other BL’s is definitely a good move. Double points, though, I’m not sure I can agree with. Usually EB is already what defines a server ticking for a lot. Effectively cutting down the point ratio on the BL’s cuts the purpose of defense and small groups, which is what is something most WvW’ers are trying to promote.

It’s not even about the codebase. That code for the maps themselves and associated topographies are generated by a game engine.
That’s also not how merging map resources works. I’m happy for you that you know what some programming languages are, but that’s not how it works.

Also, that’s not how working in low level languages works, or how software engineering goes. You don’t simply copy-paste code like that. EVER.

Anyone who’s used a game engine tool like Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, CK, or whatever, will tell you that your suggestion is not “simple” and is not about copy-pasting code.

The largest “code” changes would probably need to be resources which track player location, database updating, and event handling for interfaces which fire events to move the player to their destinations. The “code” changes aren’t even about the map.

PokerStar.5081:

You only need to change a few lines of code for this to happen

Now THAT’s funny. I have a feeling you don’t know how programming or game development works.

Seriously, this would be a massive undertaking. Unless ANet has some super-secret seamless-integration system for all of its world assets that allow building and combining huge world assets into a simple package with resolved triangle meshes and not yielding a performance hit, and have a self-correcting rendering solution to get computers running the game more efficiently, no.

Challenge of Daredevil? Oh, no no no. I quit my thief because the spec is an insult to the “harder to play for bigger rewards” aspect of the thief that kept me so addicted to it. Dodge rolling for 7-10k damage is absurd on all fronts and just insults pretty much every past attempt to play a more skillful build oriented on damage and/or proper evasion use. I won’t even get started on Vault.

Ruin needs a nerf, though. Gun flame is iffy, though maybe needs an extra 1/4 second on the cast time or something similarly small, but Ruin’s pretty massive AOE and huge damage are overdone for its short cooldown and ease-to-use with the relatively risk-free feel of 1200 range on the already-durable rev.

Cogbyrn.7283:

JoaoFA.8475:

Until more people start doing what Nemesis is doing, which is creating scenarios in game and getting real data vs theoretical, the theoretical data is worth nothing. I don’t understand the problem of spoj and others regarding this… scientists do it all the time, confront the theory and theoretical numbers with experimental data.

The problem is that there are no precise instruments for measuring DPS in-game. You have to fudge it by “knowing” how much health something has, using stopwatches, reviewing video, etc. Collecting data is difficult in this game, and when you add human error to the data collection/calculation, you’re back to estimates anyway.

The game needs a damage meter.

Not at all. All this does is completely verify the theorized maximum DPS when those values are determined.

Even if this kind of thing would debunk current evaluation, someone will just compose a build that realistically performs better and prove it with this metric. Now you have the same problem, AND it’s verified through actual gameplay.

What people fail to recognize is that there will under all circumstances ALWAYS be a meta. A game can be figured out. Checkers, an arguably simple game, has a meta. Chess, a complex game, also has a meta. In fact, checkers has been objectively figured out with an objectively best-possible moveset.

The reality of the matter – and part of an important aspect of game theory – is that optimization will always occur. There is no way to do this unless either the path to the solution is deterministic and absolute – I.E., you watch the game play itself through a series of pre-determined actions which have no means of changing (the game is no longer by definition a game), or all actions affecting the path from start to terminating states of the game are completely random (I.E., your auto attack does anything from 0 to the maximum value allowable by the programming schemes used to create the game itself.

There is no such thing as truly abolishing optimization efforts or even the ability to optimize. This can only be done if the state space for what’s allowable is infinite, which is a literally impossible thing to do when confined by the limits of physics and the fundamentals of computer architecture and computer science.

So the stance of abolishing a meta is fundamentally flawed. The only way to disperse the use of a common strategy is to make it not usable in all states by explicitly preventing a strategy from being used. That said, this merely creates a sub-optimization scheme on the problem space for that particular problem, solving genuinely nothing and in turn creating the same exact problems. This is why the “trinity” ideology (fixed scheme) is flawed as a solution to solving any kind of “meta” existing within a game. Period. This is completely irrefutable when arguing against the use of optimization.

The only true “class balance” is to just create a constant flux of imbalance to make everything take the spotlight at one point, and rotate this infinitely until everyone is satisfied with a given state of “balance” at one point in time.

I main it because they turned the thief into a gimmick/spam class that finds its only viability in pressing the same button over and over again by abusing the initiative mechanic or overtuned ratios on a few select abilities (looking at you in particular, bounding dodge) instead of a resourceful killer with a lot of tools (and his wits) at his disposal.

I main it because it can spec for damage and not instantly die.

I main it because its condition cleansing options are not horrible.

I main it because it’s mobile, fast, and consistent against almost any opponent.

I main it because the theme is really solid and brings a unique and refreshing feel to the game and games in general.

Cannot tell if OP is serious or trolling with some of these :s

Backstab numbers are fine; just needs reliability, vault and bounding dodge need numbers plummeted because those two are way too overpowered. The rest of DD is terrible, and subsequently needs to be buffed to compensate. With 30% better backstab, I’d literally be dealing 30k stabs in WvW and well over 20k each in sPvP. I get it that it does low damage on a build not meant to stack damage, but it should be that way for any class. The thief’s innate durability and versatility inhibiting this are to blame more than anything.

HS doesn’t need more damage. No. There’s already enough HS spamming. I like keeping the thief’s damage behind skilled play. There’s no reason to increase it.

BP doesn’t need changes. Smokescale should be nerfed. There should be no reward to standing in a circle being immune to things or opponents trying to shut you down playing smart by CC’ing you between intervals to prevent the stealth.

Probably not wise to have bomb create a fire field. I see big issues with might stacking and this objectively reduces the viability of signet and trap-might builds.

Surprise shot doesn’t need damage buffs. At least not to that degree. You’re literally making surprise shot deal the same damage as current backstab. You’re approaching True Shot levels of base damage before the crazy modifiers we thieves are capable of. The cripple is a a fair idea.

Disabling Shot is… tricky. The frames need to stay to keep evasion builds vulnerable and punishing 3spam, but at the same time spam by the enemy can work against this. Not sure if I can agree or disagree. If you’re going to buff the disables, I’d keep it as is. Both seems excessive.

Interesting approach with light step. Not sure if awesome or would just make SA/stealth even stronger than it already is for a defensive line/style.

RoS needs to stay 25%. 67% damage reduction given a protection source (which is very common in groups) put thief as the objectively tankiest class in the game. With DD working so well on tankier equipment sets, I have to disagree.

SE does not need further buffing. SA is already extremely strong. Cleanses/condition resistance needs to come from other sources than just SA. Apparently this effect was overpowered in Acrobatics while revealed. Even I can see this being too abusable and put too big of a disparity between SA and other trait lines.

Flawless strike doesn’t need more damage. 15% is a passive Assassin’s Signet. Again, enough modifiers are stacked where this means a lot.

Your suggestions are too heavily-based on buffing stats and/or damage. The biggest problem the thief has right now is linearity in its trait lines and a lack of compensation in its utilities. We can’t offset low cleanses from traits through a good, low-cooldown cleanse without conversely sacrificing big effects elsewhere, should even such a skill exist. Consequently, too much damage comes out of burning utilities instead of using them as utility effects. Naturally high damage and modifiers makes this issue even worse.

Simply, the thief needs versatility within its builds, not just objectively improved versions of the current skills and traits it has.

I can get behind the rest, though.

The 3spam is so real it almost hurts :s

Impact.2780:

If backstab with executioner can crit 10k, it’s vault that needs to be nerfed, not backstab that needs to be buffed.

Edit: And true shot. Nerf that nonsense. I don’t care if it’s a projectile and susceptible to projectile counters. It has the same CD as backstab, does more damage, does full damage regardless of where it hits, and is 1200 range. Yes, it does more damage. It has a coefficient of 2.66 vs. backstab’s 2.4.

Backstab is fine. It’s a lot of front-loaded damage. It also will typically hit a lot harder than True Shot on the basis that the thief stacks way more damage modifiers than guard to such a degree that True Shot should rarely deal more damage.

Granted, I’m not arguing about the balance of True Shot; I can’t really safely say if it’s fair, though; I do wonder about the cooldown being a bit too low, but I don’t really play guard at all and haven’t messed with DH.

Vault needs to go up on the initiative and Bounding Dodge needs its damage cut down. Dodge damage two-shotting people is a little bit stupid. No need for backstab/CS for HK when just blowing two dodges does the same damage.

If anything about Backstab or building for backstab is to be changed, I could see some love to Hidden Killer being pretty fair in terms of giving it some condition removal or making CnD a bit more potent via unblockable on a 6s ICD or something, just to keep D/D stab a bit more consistent.

I don’t think the core game is even available standalone?

I’d argue the review is pretty accurate, frankly. I’m not fond of IGN, but I think they nailed the review.

It’s a beautiful, thrilling theme park ride, but the more you do it inspect it, the more you realize it’s really not worth the lines and the sensation feels less and less exciting each time.

I gave it a 6 on Metacritic with the addition of some of the post-release fixes. I docked extra points because of the WvW changes and dungeon reward nerfs. With dungeons nerfed, all I see is the further promotion of SW grinding.

Nice that people have action in EBG. I’ve yet to see a single tag pop up for us in T5, and EBG is pretty much always on less than 15 people map-wide, as opposed to 24/7 tag coverage and constant pugmanding. At the moment, completely and utterly dead.

Spent several hours in the new maps hoping to see people were experimenting. Nothing.

Yes, unless:

- Remove Laser
- Remove Shrines
- Remove forced upgrades → still require yak delivery/supply
- Slight tone-down on lords – flipping takes way too long without a huge blob
- Remove open-field benefits like the sandstorm/massive AOE stealth
- More open spaces to enable fighting
- Improve universal ways to navigate the environment’s layers and more clearly distinguish what leads to where. Vertical design is fine; the Alpine BL’s had massive cliffs by hills and garrison, the northern towers, and plenty of terrain by the bloodlust areas. One could absolutely take advantage by using this terrain. The thing is, these terrain objectives were clearly marked with paths, and there were not so many small obstacles and gimmicks around to interrupt the flow of combat. It’s one thing to use terrain like a large rock to block some projectiles and take cover, it’s another to be removed of the ability to teleport because your opponent is standing behind or on top of a pointless obstruction, or a staircase of ledges you’re not allowed to go up that may not be apparent.

The way the BL’s are right now, fights are inhibited. They’re beautiful, and frankly, I’d have absolutely loved to see one of them as a PvE map in the expansion. Unfortunately they simply just do not fit the needs for WvW and large-scale combat.

Another small complaint – please, PLEASE fix the background map of the WvW maps if nothing’s going to be changed; it looks like the maps got copy-pasted in MSPaint on top of the old ones :s

coglin.1867:

BrickFurious.7169:

DeceiverX.8361:

My biggest gripes with the new BL’s are the absolutely ridiculous buffs given to defenders through auto-upgrade being solely time-based and not even coming close to how slow or difficult the process was. Defense has turned into a “set and forget” process, for the objectives will upgrade quickly enough to largely defend themselves.

This is actually my biggest gripe too, though it isn’t related just to the new BLs. As you suggested, auto-upgrading is fine, but inevitable upgrading is not. There needs to be some way for enemy players to prevent an upgrade from happening besides just capturing the objective. I think the most obvious and easy change is to make it so that a certain amount of yaks are required to reach an objective before it upgrades (in addition to the timer), similar to how upgrades were gated by the number of yaks that reached them prior to HoT.

I completely agree with this sentiment. The problem is that there were many many threads, with many many post, clamoring for an easier time defending. As much as I do not like it, there was a vast amount of post demanding a change to help defenders. Now guess what we have?

The thing is, defense being “overly-difficult” was a consequence of a lack of rewards going to defenders; not that it was too difficult. Defense was done quite successfully by small groups given a fairly fortified structure, but because that was all that was truly needed, and because such sieges demanding for substantially larger numbers for defense were so rare, the number of people needed on active defensive duties was very low, and thus the rest of the players interested in the action of combat and/or necessary rewards for the upkeep of food/upgrades/etc. would be effectively forced into the offensive. With this push, the number of attacking vs defending players became largely disproportionate, and an emphasis on blob tactics in some instances depending on the keep reinforcements (dependent on coverage to maintain upgraded structures) made defense a very non-viable way to play in general.

Ultimately, the problem stems from lack of rewards for non-aggressive players and a lack of things to do while defending unless a major assault is performed. Without the matter of rewards resolved, nothing will actually ever change, if not get worse.

The fact that this escaped the minds of the developers working on WvW is unfortunate for the sake of the format and the game in general. I hope to see some of these issues resolved in the near future, as I understand quite a few people are upset and are looking for alternatives.

As a power reaper, it’s a really gross fight. There are definitely way more opportunities to be interrupted right through stability just due to the sheer stripping potential.

From a WvW perspective:

My best success so far (as a power/DPS reaper) has come down to Staff/GS x/SR/R with x being Spite or Death Magic. DM is a bit more consistent as the might gain from Spite can be stripped really fast making the line rather ineffective. Make absolutely sure you’re using Blighter’s Boon; the life force is completely necessary.

The big takeaway is to try and interrupt them back as much as possible, and keep as close as possible while maintaining AOE’s and regening life force. Spectral grasp is awesome to drag the real mesmer back to you and interrupt any channels they may have going on (mantra, heal, MI) while gaining lots of life force. Heal/Utilities are best as something like YSIM + Spectral Armor + Spectral Grasp + Suffer +CttB to maximize burst life force gain while not in shroud and lock them down as much as possible.

Enter the fight with max LF otherwise you’re losing. If you don’t have max, run away; you’re not winning.

I’ll usually try to engage via RS2, RS3 and pop the fear into RS4. Either they take a ton of damage and their clones die, or they pop blink. F5’s likely used at this point as they’re either burning cooldowns to burst or avoid death. Likely they’ve retaliated to some extent at this point, so you’re almost out of LF. Ditch shroud and pop your SA if they’ve already used their boon strip from their GS3. If not, ready up SA for the stunbreak/protection and hit the nearest clone or anything with GS3 for quick LF, and be ready to rush dodges and shroud for a little extra durability, for the combo is coming. If they took damage, they’re likely still close. GS5 and reel them into a gravedigger to force a heal and/or blow up clones. Likely, they’ve shifted at this point, resetting cooldowns. Not likely finished yet. If they’re low, likely they’ll blink and/or start channeling either a heal or MI. On the channel/blink, react with grasp to interrupt and pull them back in, negating their stun break and teleport, then open again with shroud 3 and lock them into a fear chain, RS5, an auto or two, then leave shroud, swap to any fear mechanism (I like staff due to its range and chill/marks trigger on stealthed targets and show position), and proceed to catch up, burn CttB, and hopefully you’re good to re-shroud and auto them to death while they have no ways to escape.

Budget your heal as needed, and ideally transfer disabling conditions to slow them down. You’re going to need to be faster than them.

The real struggle is against Scrappers. I’ve yet to beat a competent one or see a competent one even go down. The mobility, CC and control conditions, and general mitigation paired with substantial burst damage is bonkers.

Mesmer GS 1 range is not 1200. It’s functionally closer to 1500. The beam gains all of the benefits from projectile attacks getting extra range (like ranger’s longbow), but cannot be deflected or reflected. I would argue it’s actually the second strongest 1200-capable ranged option in the game at the moment (ranger longbow takes first of course), and its cover condition pressure, might gain, high point-blank burst, boon-stripping, and rapid sigil procc’ing make it one of the best weapons to use in general through its sheer utility and burst with limited ways to deal with it.

Also, the attack doesn’t cleave – it penetrates. If someone stands in between you and your target, both will take damage. I’m seeing it used a lot now in group WvW play because it lets back-line players take hits as well as the front lines.

The DPS of #1 is bad relative to other classes, but so does ranged in general (Melee always out-dps’s it. Always.), and mesmers in general have low DPS. 20k+ shatters every few seconds, massive lockdown, and the best condition pressure in the game are meant to offset this, though.

I’m pretty sure Adrenaline is way different from shroud in regards to dependencies.

Actually, I’m positive it is. A necro/reaper without substantial life force/shroud is so painfully useless it’s almost sad.

Not saying I support the immediate decay – I think adrenaline should have a fixed decay rate, per point, combat or not, for OOC is a bit punishing but the old decay was way too slow, and half-heartedly flailing around shouldn’t maintain adrenaline – being hit or hitting should.

Rauderi.8706:

I’m beginning to think half my frustration with playing warrior in HoT is warrior itself. Or how every mob seems hellbent on countering warrior (and melee in general). The accusations of “Range Wars 2” aren’t wrong by any stretch.

(The other half of my frustration is shoddy layouts in portions of the map design.)

Could be that part of my combat frustration is choosing hammer, for the sake of murdering Defiance bars (and squishing pocket raptors :P), instead of the “more acceptable” greatsword and longbow. But that’s kind of the point in saying it. If you’re not using Phalanx Strength/Greatsword or ShoutBow, there aren’t any decent builds to tackle HoT content.

My non-Chrono mesmer walked in and wrecked shop, effortlessly. My ranger sails through most of the enemies. But my warrior has to close massive gaps in order to deal subpar damage, while enemies either leap-stealth away or charging-knockdown with no-cooldown skills.

So, I’m not sure if I regret HoT itself, or just experiencing it with a warrior.

Yea, not even bothering with it on my thief for this reason. I think daredevil was made defensive/evasive because the thief didn’t physically have enough dodges to deal with everything autokilling them in the expansion, not because of any desired change to class direction.

Wars are weird at the moment. The performance ceiling is low but so is the barrier of entry. Not sure what they can do to make the class perform better in PvP environments without breaking it due to the design needing to be simple and still let newer or more inexperienced players find success as the class was meant to do. I feel like more technical abilities are needed, and hopefully come with subsequent specialization releases. As it is, though, brute strength and the lack of meaningful interaction/difficulty for executing their moves was what made them go through the OP → UP decline.

I blame the hammer and PS for being so strong keeping them from being buffed for the PvP formats and PvE, respectively.

High-population servers likely do not have too many issues with the new maps’ size. Unfortunately on the lower tiers, the increased size and vertical complexity makes the maps ghost towns.

I’m all for small-group havoc play, which involves a lot of solo flipping and the “PvE” aspects of WvW, but I view the megablob-type of play similarly in that it’s usually not possible to discern what’s going on. Simply not encountering foes is strictly boring, though, so making the maps are big as they are hurts everyone not in T1 a lot more than it should.

My biggest gripes with the new BL’s are the absolutely ridiculous buffs given to defenders through auto-upgrade being solely time-based and not even coming close to how slow or difficult the process was. Defense has turned into a “set and forget” process, for the objectives will upgrade quickly enough to largely defend themselves.

I’ve got some suggestions, which while some are fairly complex (and others very basic), would likely heavily improve WvW and make this game extremely distinguished from any other competition. I know ANet has the resources in due time, so while these are substantial, I imagine the format’s success would make them worthwhile.

- Cost reduction/free upgrades but still a manual upgrade path requiring supply and corresponding yaks.

- Giving keep defense objectives good and distinct rewards by a new wallet currency that is gained only via defending objectives with substantially increased rewards based on a participation system, like in the HoT maps. Currency can be spent at a defense merchant for things like superior siege, exotic equipment, and ascended materials.

- Guaranteed defensive siege rewards for completing a “defend” objective as to allow defenders to build siege at no expense or leaving the objective, scaling based on participation.

- Removal of the laser and reversion of guild fortifications to being easily-accessible by smaller or newer guilds.

- Removing/heavily changing the large-scale combat effects which provide huge benefits to those involved in the environment, such as the massive areas of group stealth, immunity to lava damage, no fall damage, etc. Tertiary objectives are cool, but shouldn’t provide massive fighting benefits and make fights utterly one-sided. Small bonuses like bloodlust were on the right track as they gave small advantages in the form of mere stat increases rather than huge terrain bonuses and other immunities.

-The sandstorm idea is cool for mobile groups to go undetected, but the areas it covers are too large and cover too many locations. etc.

- Keep lords and objective defender health needs to be brought down to where it was, but simply with more extensive scaling. I tried taking SMC with around five people a few days ago, and after 15 minutes of attacking the lord, we got the lord down to around 20% and then got blobbed. It took us almost an hour to get in to begin with. I don’t see why after breaching it should be so overly-difficult to cap, since breaching is meant to be the hard part/point.

(The big one, but what would be a sweet implementation to really hammer down on WvW)
- A formal system for scouts to report enemy locations. A “war table” or something in keeps would be a really cool way for players to inspect enemy movement patterns reported in by scouts. This way a more formal game strategy can be applied through the use of scouts to get info, strategists in base to interpret and provide a game plan, and the actual people fighting on the field. This can also make scouting and strategic play more rewarding by allowing scouts to report information to the strategists which can assign their own forces to combat an opposing force or move elsewhere. If the objectives are completed by the “assigned” forces in a time period, the strategist and scout gets personal reward for leading his team to victory. Think of it like an RTS, except the agents on the field are real people, and the strategist is merely theorizing on what will happen, per the scouts’ information. This still requires communication with the frontline commanders to actually succeed, and can be rejected. But if things play out like the strategist expects from the scout’s information, everyone gets individually rewarded, from the scouts to the strategists to the people fighting themselves.

This way, with systems above, defense agents also gain rewards by defending a keep to protect the strategists. Everyone is rewarded fairly and the nature of WvW becomes completely overhauled into real large-scale fighting with as much complexity as the users want, with no dependence on lame tertiary objectives supplying overly-inflated boosts. Large-area stealth fields then have a place and purpose for movement or hiding, but scouts can also overcome this.

Same thing as OP, same problem with some guildmates.

It’s likely an account issue, as two of my guildmates live together, and one is online with no problems and the other cannot log in like the rest of us.

Sicarius.4639:

Sardath.8524:

There is so much easy content in the game core PvE, Dungeons, Fractals(first levels), world bosses, etc.

Please don’t nerf the difficulty of HoT! I’m talking strictly about encounters, I don’t care about masteries and elite specializations. Make the first map more accessible, if you want, but please leave the rest as it is.

PvE in every other MMO is a brain dead autoattack grind, make this one stand out!

If it isn’t nerfed, when zones become dead or they try to move everyone to the next thing it will be impossible for anyone.

Unless it is changed in the future it will become a wasteland.

Levelling in Vanilla 1-80 now is absolutely nothing like Day 1.

So much this.

I remember the “defend the bridge from the centaurs” event at launch lasting like 45 minutes and summoning 10+ champions per wave due to the sheer number of people playing scaling the event to peak capacity. Those events used to also be made for groups. They got nerfed (like nebo terrace) because they were borderline-impossible to take on solo after the content got stale and people moved on.

The same events are now hardly done because people have moved on.

Give it a few months and the PvE grinders will be back in the SW for cash/mastery of core Tyria, PvP/WvW players back in PvP/WvW, and nobody will be in the HoT maps.

Blaine Tog.8304:

DeceiverX.8361:

@OP

Funny, because the elite specs are the sole reason I bought HoT. I have literally zero interest in the jungle, loot, legendaries, or story. I’ve skipped the cutscenes I’ve gotten to so far to make the grind go faster, but have been on limited time and usually rage-logged preemptively from running around doing nothing except waiting for events.

I know, and I totally get your frustrating. The Elite specs were a big part of why I bought the expansion as well and it’s totally ridiculous that Anet gated them so very hard. We should absolutely keep bugging them to lower the gates at least a little, but in the meantime, the only way to save yourself from frustrating is to alter your expectations. I wish there were another option, but there simply isn’t.

I’m simply not playing the game for more than a few minutes at a time, mostly to talk to friends at this point.

Very much hoping for Black Desert to be good if this isn’t changed dramatically.

@OP

Funny, because the elite specs are the sole reason I bought HoT. I have literally zero interest in the jungle, loot, legendaries, or story. I’ve skipped the cutscenes I’ve gotten to so far to make the grind go faster, but have been on limited time and usually rage-logged preemptively from running around doing nothing except waiting for events.