Guild Wars 2

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Well you would be wrong. He recovered from stealth not from his dire. If he did not have stealth he would have died in time because his heal can not keep up with the damage inflicted on him. It is as simple as that. If dire was as powerful as you claim no theif would ever need stealth. Dire does nothing against a condition build that Shamans does not do. The toughness on dire and vitality on dire does not give a thief more health or damage mitigation thhen what a warrior gets in solders. I can kill warriors that wear soldiers. The difference between a warrior and a thief is the stealth not the armor.

one of my current theif builds uses a blend of Shamans/Apothecary. Along with SA this guy every bit and more survivable then is your thief in dire.

And if he was that bad as to die in dire gear, he would have died even with the stealth while playing squishier.

Unless of course, you don’t personally know how to play against stealth. And based on the fact you can easily kill a war and not a thief who is healing for pretty much the same amount while stealthed, it doesn’t sound like you know how to.

Stealth itself is only problematic on trapper thief. Otherwise it’s usually the effects associated with it like PU and SRejuv that make it over the top. Invisibility is really easy to counter once you learn how to play it and subsequently against it, though.

Would like to point out that this thread is rapidly approaching the number of views that most patch note threads have, and that talking in chat so far has yielded around only one in five people actually knowing about this, with around 3 of 5 usually responding with “that’s stupid” or similar responses.

@Pope:

Whether or not people leave, I don’t know. But I mean grocery stores could decide to mark up prices by 500%. I mean, nobody needs luxuries/snack foods or pre-prepared meals, no? The money spent on doritos in the past could have gone towards more ingredients to make dinner with. It wouldn’t make their customers very happy if they did this, though, but people would still probably buy food for three meals a day to satisfy their hunger, when in reality they can sustain themselves just fine on only a few hundred calories per day.

And if they realize they’re hurting people? Well, you’re basically saying it wouldn’t be justified to reduce prices because people would complain that they “wasted money on overpriced food in the past.”

That’s effectively your analogy. Exaggerated, slightly. But ethics-wise, it’s pretty much identical. It’s not that the sky is falling; it’s that this is just blatantly screwing people over for no real reason and a portion of their customer base is upset about it.

In another context, why did “the 99%” get so upset? It’s not like “the 1%” are that rich. Maybe those scumbag wanting things on sliver platters should have just worked harder and dealt with their problems instead of whining about any potential legitimate inhibitions. Not that I agree with the mentality in full, but you get the point.

Or maybe you don’t.

I mean, child factory labor wasn’t holding back children from getting an education, right? I mean the world wasn’t suffering from it; the quality of cheap goods was at its best, and there were plenty of well-educated children in the world who grew up to be successful. Right?

</s></rant></dumbstruck>

ArenaNet is a business. They’re developing “new content” only to get revenue.

Until they go above and beyond that like they initially did in their manifesto, which is now long-inaccurate and apparently forsaken, they deserve no special thanks from me, especially since this hero point grind effectively killed the expansion for me.

77 on mine. Every other of my 15 level 80’s, though? Less than 10.

I hate map exploration with a burning passion.

I sincerely doubt it. Based on a variety of posts and information that has been thrown around, I’d still wager the HP cost is well-likely over 200 or closer to 300.

The specialization unlocks at 60. You get your first minor adept 60 deep. Datamined numbers in the past were already near or close to the 200-300 area.

It’s cool that you understand, unfortunately there is a lot of “Deal with it I like to explore so do what I do” mentality going on by PvE players or completionists.

Sure. I do recall it being several hundred level ups, though.

Would actually be kind of funny if the elite specs were heavily-gated behind this. Maybe PvE players would begin to understand the feelings WvW’ers are experiencing now.

They described the new framework for unlocking skills and traits via HP as a new progression system, which they stated would and could be gained from just leveling up. Separately, they also stated that masteries would also be another progression system for those interested in PvE to explore more of the world in more interesting or convenient way, or get access to other features.

Nowhere did they say elite specs were going to be a supplementary progression system on top of the existing specialization system that requires the full unlock of all existing specializations to gain access to.

Would only be P2W if the specs were innately stronger than the base ones.

I wouldn’t buy it, though.

Consider what it means from ANet’s point of view; they’d make extra money effectively or reduce the number of gems in the game by selling half-baked and badly-designed/grindy content and letting people skip by the toll to enjoy the actual game. It’s DLC fines on DLC fines. I’d rather not give them my business to make them keep doing that, frankly.

Have fun getting the masteries maxed out to reach map completion to get those HP’s lol. I do believe its 300 level ups after 80 per mastery? Or was it closer to 600?

Build for HoT content? I won’t be.

Will likely much rather stay in WvW and get ranks via a non-grind than even attempt at hero point farming in PvE.

And typically the number of active forum posters in online games is < 1% of the players actually playing.

A lot of people aren’t even aware about this yet.

If it wasn’t against the ToS to rally players/boycott services, I’d have already been on that. At first I was going to just join the trains to get through HoT content as fast as humanly possible, but I’d rather not give ANet the metrics of that people are playing the content.

The application is way too high.

In WvW, I’m running -40% condition duration and 2 cleanses per second for 15 seconds or longer in a lot of fights, and it still isn’t enough because the re-application period is so quick. Plus, without frequent burst cleanses, the lack of priority sometimes makes it almost impossible to cleanse the proper one.

My suggestion? Nerf application, remove DoT on confusion (The point is to beat scrubs who are spamming and don’t pay attention, not get free kills on people trying to not act while their existing cleanses are on cooldown and then nuke them when they actually use a cleanse), buff all condition damage by 10% per tick and bleeding damage by like 15%, and remove the duration food, both + and – to compensate. This lets condition builds get better damage per tick (and damage/defense by food scaling) and learn to either sustain damage better or burst-apply a huge chunk of conditions at higher ticks.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DeceiverX.8361:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Nike.2631:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

/sigh

(Silver platter) here yah go. The whole game unlocked for you. Enjoy.

Because it would be morally wrong to have new maps and new skills at the same time.

Hmmm. I could have sworn that when the game first started I had to unlock the weapon skills then the utility skills then the traits by playing to level 80 and getting skill points, for each and every single char I made.

Could be wrong of course, but that’s what I remember.

Just you. When I played the game at the start, players finished weapon skills by level 3 of a particular set if starting fresh via mob kills, and also received all traits by level 60, there were no level requirements by tier, and all of these were based solely on level instead of any kind of content-gating.

I.E., you had the last 20 levels to enjoy a full build and start working on gear for endgame rather than reaching 80 and just learning about the game or not getting to enjoy the content you’ve just completed to create a build to complete better.

In other words, yes I did have to level without any tomes or writs or by fast leveling in eotm. I had to get to level 60 to unlock everything by playing the game and it me hours and hours to get to level 60 just by map completion and events, and there wasn’t any way to fast track it.

I guess my memory isn’t so faulty after all.

You said 80. You stated you had to unlock everything. All utility skill types were available and did not need to be unlocked, and were available at level 11. Elites came in at 30. You can play sPvP the entire game and end up with a full build via tomes, and that was the ONLY way to get them. There were no dailies, no tomes as rewards in WvW, etc.

You act like getting tomes and using them to level up either a main or second characters isn’t a valid way to play. sPvP players do this, as the game intended, and they exist to allow a choice in what to level up. ANet knows making alts is tedious. Why else would they give free level 20/30 scrolls for character birthdays?

Seriously, don’t act all high-and-mighty on this subject like we’re entitled or that you’re a better individual. I get you want to have fun. I do, too. My fun doesn’t involve running around a map pressing 1 and f and/or grinding away masteries to get there that I frankly deem useless considering I have no intention on playing extensively within the jungle. Why? Because I don’t have that kind of time, but I like this game a lot, so I’m voicing my concerns. I’d like to get the ability to play the new specs from HoT. I really couldn’t care less about the loot or money or skins from them. I just want to play the spec for what it is, and what HoT was sold on, basically.

Is there something wrong with being upset about a purchase, or mislead on what that purchase may entail, or trying to voice concerns about it?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Nike.2631:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

/sigh

(Silver platter) here yah go. The whole game unlocked for you. Enjoy.

Because it would be morally wrong to have new maps and new skills at the same time.

Hmmm. I could have sworn that when the game first started I had to unlock the weapon skills then the utility skills then the traits by playing to level 80 and getting skill points, for each and every single char I made.

Could be wrong of course, but that’s what I remember.

Just you. When I played the game at the start, players finished weapon skills by level 3 of a particular set if starting fresh via mob kills, and also received all traits by level 60, there were no level requirements by tier, and all of these were based solely on level instead of any kind of content-gating.

I.E., you had the last 20 levels to enjoy a full build and start working on gear for endgame rather than reaching 80 and just learning about the game or not getting to enjoy the content you’ve just completed to create a build to complete better.

Puck.9612:

Jana.6831:

jdallen.5179:

With respect, jana, you answered a different question; we were doing what you were suggesting.

The question I actually asked was, how does a trapper thief kill 4 or 5 PC’s, given parity in player skill and equipment? What do they equip? What skills do they use? How do they sequence them?

That should highlight either what’s broken, or how to counter it.

AoE skills, every class has them, use them. Dodge, also every class is able to do that, cleanse condis, yet again every class can do that.
In short: Think (not everybody can do that)

Yeah guys, just aoe down the full dire thief. It’s not like you are guessing his location since he has super speed or teleports to escape and reset the fight while fully stealthed…

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

xadine.7069:

actually I find it quite disapointing that PvP will probably be the only part of the game that will require 0 time/effort to unlock elite spec…

Why? Most people heavily invested in the PvP formats absolutely hate everything about the endless face-smashing that is PvE in this game.

I probably will, but I wish I hadn’t.

Wasn’t expecting a bomb like the one released today to insult pretty much everyone so blatantly and ruin the purpose of the expansion.

BrotherBelial.3094:

headraver.4862:

well to be honest for me what ive seen about how many hero points needed to unlock elite specializations is insane the poor wvw community and pve community have to grind it out but then all ya have to do to unlock it in pvp is enter the pvp lobby to me this is total bs just goes to show anet is all about pvp every thing in guildwars 2 skill nerfs etc are based around pvp

Its hardly a grind. If you have all the HP from the core.game you have a head start, the HP in HoT give 10 points each. So even if you don’t have all the core HP, you only ned to do 40 HP in HoT to unlock them. And ANet have said, you can get all HP needed for.the specs from HoT. So it will probably be a lot quicker than mapping core to get the “leg up” as it where.

That’s entirely dependent on how accessible the HP’s are.

The amount of mastery EXP needed to max out one of the mastery lines regarding transportation of the new maps is the same as leveling over 300 times. That’s not a short period of time, or even close to it.

Menadena.7482:

Swagger.1459:

Colin “Heartbreaker of Thorns” Johanson

Sorry, but that is not really fair to him. He only works there and likely did not make the call that it would be 400. Actually, I consider it a favour that he let us know rather than they kept us in the dark completely.

He is the lead game director/designer. It is well within his control to make this kind of call or make a call to change it. Consequently, if he isn’t aware that this is a problem, or didn’t forsee the reaction of the community be it either disconnection or lack of interaction with those who did make this decision, there’s a huge failure on his end to either get connected with the players or to look over what the hell is going on with arguably the most important, game-changing part of the expansion.

BobbyT.7192:

Nike.2631:

BobbyT.7192:

good way to learn a class imo

I have 5 Guardians. I was planning to turn 3 of them into Dragonhunters. Not sure how much learning there’s gonna be doing the same 40 HP a second and third time…

I never really got the reason why people would have more then one of a single profession, (seriously…5? like on one account?) but what ever floats your boat.

There are multiple reasons.

Some people, like in the RP’ing community, treat their characters as separate entities and have different builds and aesthetics, groups, etc.

Many people before the free/on-demand reset of traits made separate characters to swap between builds for WvW as it was/is faster than switching everything around on one. Instead, you just move to character creation -> click -> 5s later port to WvW, a total time of like 15s. When defending a keep, that time saved can matter.

Some people did it to save builds or experiment on other things.

Some people keep their older characters around to collect birthday loot but instead primarily use a secondary that they like the look or name of better, or got lucky on progress for something character-bound.

Some people just like different themes, thought of a funny name, or just got bored enough at one point to try the process again to see if new low-level system changes change the game in any meaningful way.

DiogoSilva.7089:

A good videogame should be about the journey, not only about the destination.

It should be about the journey. A journey I planned on having trying something new instead of smashing my face into effectively the same content as the same character I’ve been playing for the past three years. I bought the expansion ONLY for the elite specializations. Literally, that is the ONLY reason I bought it. No other. I could care less about new maps, new skins, new story, new encounters… nothing. Just something new to actually experience the game in a different way.

Liewec.2896:

why are you in such a hurry to run out of content? XD
for once i’m happy that theres progression!

I’m not is the thing. Unlike people who rush to finish completion and collections, I’ve not even uncovered half of the map three years in and 2000 hours in of WvW on my main character alone. I’m not bored, and there’s still plenty of content in the vanilla game to do. I like to go at my own pace, not at a pace dictated to me by anyone else. To play the game in a fun and meaningful way, however, I have to play in a way dictated to me by another entity, and strictly speaking, I don’t find that fun, and it exhausts content much, much faster than I’d like to.

PopeUrban made a post a few pages back about this game being the most alt-friendly in history or somesuch claim… I’m sorry but I completely disagree. While I came from a ruthless, open-PK Korean “mob grind” game, players could take the level requirements off of any armor, and there was no such thing on armor and weapons as account or soul binding; you could take a literal endgame piece of gear, take out the level requirements down to starter levels and stats, equip all of it on a fresh noob, and go from the starter town right to the equivalent of level 60+ content, gaining full EXP per kill. In the starter levels, going to a high level zone would actually give like 5-6 levels per kill. Experienced players could max an alt with no instant-level effects in under a day given the budget to do so, which came with experience.

The amount of nonsense time-gating apparent for this system is completely absurd and ruins the entire purpose of the expansion for me; to play more of GW2 and explore new systems and ways of playing without feeling the need to be on a treadmill to do so first.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Runiir.6425:

Doesn’t matter what the rate is when you take into account you need every single point in the old maps as well. That x9 is too much.

Except you don’t! There are enough hero challenges in the jungle you don’t need to do any in the core tyrian world – those simply speed you up on day one if you already got them.

So much for “no grind”, eh?

Oh right, I forgot about the claim that every single player in this game loves smashing their face against AI using whatever arbitrary build is preferred to get them though it instead of playing the game for what is was marketed as in regards to allowing everyone to progress in any and every way at reasonable rates. I forgot that everything released lately has been about gating progress and preventing players from accessing the game at their own pace and instead forcing them to play the game the way you want them to. I forgot that directly singling out and insulting a player on livestream calling them an “exception” because they played the game the way they wanted to happened. I forgot that those involved in the design of the game are and have been completely oblivious to the actual concerns of its players for the past several years. I forgot that the announcement for this content was announced eight months ago and that some of the most critical details have been kept secret until after the majority of sales has been generated.

And I’m sorry. I truly am sorry, that I’ve been so naive as to expect anything different.

Sorry, but this attitude change from release is disgusting. Consider the principles that have made this franchise successful. Consider the initial manifesto. Consider why you are where you are.

You got here on quality single-player story-driven content in GW1 and by letting people play the game as they want to in GW2. We’re barely seeing that quality here as it is. And that quality is definitely not there for those who don’t want to grind or merely want to become engrossed in the story, not get stuck behind walls and artificial content gates that are completely arbitrary or designed to force players into particular facets of the game. Hell, the only real quality gameplay in this game that’s making it stand out from the competition is the fact that there is next to competition, and that your programmers, systems engineers, and people behind the curtains actually making this shindig work are doing the best work out there right now. Be thankful they’re still there, because of everything released over the past few years, the solidity of the gameplay itself is one of the few reasons many people have been here to stay instead of going home after a day at the theme park.

Tell me, why does exploring the jungle turn a necromancer into a reaper? Why does a mesmer innately learn how to summon more clones and use wells by flying around on a kite? Where does the engineer find the strength to wield a massive hammer and the inspiration to make drones in a resource-scarce environment after a harsh impact?

“No grind” in HoT? I’m sorry, but that’s only valid from maybe your perspective. Gating the way the game is played so substantially through menial tasks is the very definition of this, especially when those tasks are also locked behind even more menial tasks, such as leveling masteries to be allowed to explore the jungle further, or the need to do this on every single character a player owns.

Yea this is kind of obscene.

Wish I hadn’t pre-purchased. I loved playing the specs in beta, but I have no intention to grind my way through PvE or hundreds of WvW ranks just to get enjoyment from playing the game.

It is not a visible modifier, no. Any effects that modify damage output, unless given a special icon as an in-combat-only effect will not produce any kind of notification of damage being modified.

Whatever you want. In its current state, a mesmer played well can pretty much solo anything if it’s not an excessively-large group. I would have to recommend something like a guard that can tank for a few seconds, and/or stay way back like a ranger while the thief and mesmer stealth/lose targeting, for you’re going to get focused in those intermittent periods if you aren’t one of the two. If you play a thief, though, you will be making it more difficult on your other thief ally when you enter stealth and he exits.

Emelyn.8729:

I also enjoyed the opportunity to sit still, letting the pullers pull to the group rather than being constantly on the move.

This was a huge draw to GW2 for me. I’ve pretty much played exclusively ranged characters in every game I’ve ever had the option to except in this one (ranger here is meh, I prefer the hyper-DPS archer-type role), and strictly speaking, pulling mobs for hours and hours on end just running in circles and effectively being the only one incapable of getting involved in the conversation without getting yelled at for doing the job sub-optimally gets really old really fast. In the game I played before this, the ranger could easily get one-shot by trash mobs, but was difficult to hit due to its incredible mobility (think of a passive super speed buff except twice as fast levels of crazy fast). Needing to constantly worry about perfect positioning, especially when ranged or caster mobs got involved just made the process very exhaustive. PvP sometimes was actually less stressful depending on the context.

Could be an interesting unlock scheme if some of the above got combined:
First completion and all subsequent completions: 20% heart progress, up to 99%
Second completion: Remove FoW by WP’s, allow 1g cost to move to any undiscovered WP.
Third: Remove FoW by hearts
Fourth: Reduce undiscovered WP cost to 50s each
Fifth: Remove FoW from all objectives, Title “Master Geographer”

This way, MC still requires some effort but doesn’t turn the process into a grind, create issues with FoW, or an overly-expensive venture to complete quickly.

Maybe OP’s name shouldn’t be a curse word :P

Only if the OP paid for it. Not much to gain if relearning the game and getting someone else who’s new into it, though.

I’m pretty sure luxury item value does not inflate based on the value deemed as “high cost” by the lowest common denominator. That’s usually not how economies work.

Usually it’s based on the demand and how difficult it is to actually get said item or service at said quality. A precursor being valued at 100G based on an economy with perfect wealth distribution implies that all events leading to said wealth are worthwhile to sacrifice for said item (or aren’t). In which case, the demand is either still much greater than the supply, or much less, and wealth distribution still means nothing, because ultimately only one person ends up with the precursor, and in the end, the wealth is no longer evenly distributed because one player has 200g and another has 0g and a precursor. Typically, any number of informed agents in any system will act similarly, and thus, the attitude of spending or not spending everything for a precursor will be mirrored across the board.

A zero-sum system would imply that people are only ever allowed to have 100g’s worth of value on them, which means the buyer of the precursor would end up never able to trade again, and the seller would end up with 100g still – a meaningless trade. Not to mention that even if he was allowed to store up to 200, it means almost nothing since the rest of the game would need to be balanced around spending that 100g, and if he ends up with excess in said scenario, he has nothing to spend the extra 100g on, also nullifying the purpose of the trade.

Realistically, I can’t see distribution of wealth having any impact on the price of the item, especially given the ability for players to generate currency at will. Ultimately a better comparison is treating time as the currency, and RNG kills the “fairness” and effective stability of the system when high-value items are taken into account. The health of an economy should be measured by accessibility to commodities – the reason the Big Mac Index is quite valid.

Danikat.8537:

If I was you I’d keep all your old characters but make a new one (assuming you have a free slot) and level them up to re-learn the game.

A huge amount has changed in 2 years, but one of those things is that the game is a lot better at teaching you how things work as you go along. Anything you don’t understand you can ask in map chat or on here.

Not sure I’d agree that it’s gotten better at teaching the game. Everyone I’ve met so far who’s started has a ton of questions as to why everything is covered in a lock icon or gets a bit frustrated with limited content to begin with. Having the community work together to answer such questions was a huge thing going for GW2 at release imho.

Maybe after a certain threshold of doing something it should become account bound instead? Maybe on the fourth of fifth time perhaps? There’s only so much one can get out of exploring the same starter areas, for example.

I can’t even bring myself to do more than half of MC on my first character 2500+ hours in. The other 15 characters… yea that’s never happening.

I’d probably suggest hopping around on your 80 to get a feel for things, catch up a bit in regards to what’s changed at end-game that you used to be aware of (hint: a lot), and then going through on a new character and getting a feel for the process changing as a new character as well, for a lot of that has also changed or been reworked multiple times.

Way too much has changed to even begin to try and explain things. All I can suggest is that you dive in and try to piece things together again based on your memory of things expecting that a lot has in fact changed, from landscapes and maps to stories to loot to classes and builds to story.

I don’t really get the intention, either.

Can’t save money? That’s your problem. Want to guarantee your money is saved or potentially invested? Buy yourself out in commodities, save them until you desperately need them, and sell them back out. If you do it right, you may even profit after the tax.

Think it’s unrealistic? This is a fantasy game. This isn’t about simulating reality, and pretty much everything about the game is impossible. If I wanted to play “life simulator”, I wouldn’t be playing a game. If I wanted the exploration parts, I’d have saved up some money and gone on a hiking trip somewhere nice. If I wanted the combat, I’d take classes in formal training or LARP.

There’s also no sense of scale for the size of currency. They can sure be gold pieces, but what if I told you they were only about the size of a pea each? Even 10000 units ends up being very insignificant compared to your character’s capacity to easily swing that 250+ pound greatsword.

I just don’t get why people feel this should be a feature. If it’s to save money… then learn to resist every whim and temptation. Not seeing the money doesn’t mean it’s not there, and acting like it isn’t there because you can’t see it is a very naive way to live and handle money in the real world.

I’ll pass on most of the more “classic” elements of MMO play as some people have coined them. Frankly, I view most of them as primitive and poor design in regards to sustainability and their effects on player retention and churning.

When I initially read “camping” I thought the OP was talking about needing to actually clear an area and rest like in RSC. That may be interesting as a concept in huge persistent worlds, but GW2’s isn’t so large as to need it. Monster camp/grind, though… those are horrible things I plan to never experience again in MMO’s. I’ve moved mostly to tabletops at this point because the grind is unnecessary and lacks any kind of depth or substance outside of forcing perspective that is already immediately noticeable from a numbers and mechanics point-of-view.

Eh, I have a few minutes to blow so why not. Fairly expected results aside, it was fun :P

Not really sure of the “you channel your anger” and “punch the air” descriptions of conqueror really apply… at all. But I would argue the results were fairly accurate. That said, any amount of introspection could verify this by assessing one’s own interests and aspects they pay the most attention to. I will give it accuracy the descriptions on Conqueror/Daredevil + Exception, though:

Your BrainHex Class is Conqueror.
Your BrainHex ClassYour BrainHex Sub-Class is Conqueror-Daredevil.

You like defeating impossibly difficult foes, struggling until you eventually achieve victory, and beating other players as well as rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control.

Each BrainHex Class also has an Exception, which describes what you dislike about playing games. Your Exceptions are:

» No Commitment: You dislike being asked to complete everything, preferring to pick and choose which tasks you will attempt, or simply messing around with a game.

Your scores for each of the classes in this test were as follows:

Conqueror: 18
Daredevil: 16
Socialiser: 14
Mastermind: 12
Seeker: 5
Survivor: 3
Achiever: -2

I’m pretty sure more points in Mastermind and fewer in Achiever (yup, I HATE collecting/exploring) would be more accurate, however. Typically I invent and optimize builds, though usually only for the ones I plan to play.

Hell, still having 48% map completion on my most-played/most-discovered character having over 2.5k hours on it and playing since release has made me well-aware I’m not an achiever/explorer-type :P

Rekt.5360:

DeceiverX.8361:

As others have mentioned, D/D is a pretty bad set relative to D/P. Shadow Shot and the stealth uptime from Black Powder are why the set is considered so well; you need the stealth from BP + Heartseeker because you don’t want to be seen traversing the map, whereas D/D needs to be in combat and land a hit with CnD to get it, and getting that close in anything but a + 1 is pretty much asking to die because of how fragile you’re going to be, even when building tankier. Shadow Shot is just a blatantly overpowered skill for the initiative system; sorry for any D/P players out there, but this skill is just too good to make D/D ever viable, even if Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger get reworked. Unblockable blinding high-damage teleport on 4 initiative is so ungodly strong for skirmishing that there’s no reason to ever really even waste the initiative for CnD or BP+HS when instead you get the same damage out of spamming 3 twice with free gap closes, blinds/safety from a next hit or for your ally, and a very powerful attack.

D/D has one benefit; you’ll be a better thief, given the time and effort to become better. If you play to even make someone even slightly afraid of you or kill some D/P thieves, you know you’ve got a skill leg-up on them. Every time I’ve been called out by another thief for losing as D/D against D/P and they’ve been willing to fight again with me as D/P, I’ve won. Messing around with some guild-members, I stayed in the middle of our “thief list” as D/D, and when one got arrogant after beating me a few times, I fought him as D/P around twenty times and he never even landed a hit against me in any of the games, while I continued to play DA/CS/Trickery signets. D/D might suck, but learning to do remotely well will teach you how to play the class and use your resources.

My advice? If you want to learn how to play the class well, play D/D for a while in hotjoin, and ignore the flaming from people telling you to play another set/calling you bad/names, etc., then if you want to get competitive or just slightly bolster your chances of winning, play D/P and press 3 to victory whenever you get in a fight because Shadow Shot is literally the only skill you should ever need if you use your dodges and utilities properly, and you may never get hit.

As a side note, while I am not much of a shortbow fan (I play D/D and S/D in WvW), it is pretty much a requirement for sPvP. The vertical mobility is just way too important for escapes.

Source: ~2.5k hours of D/D thief near-exclusively since launch.

Tbh, I feel like s/d is even worse off than d/d. The dmg is sooo low for the survivability that it’s hilarious. At least im happy daredevil will fix A LOT of the problems with s/d and essentially give you the choice of either having a stupid amount of dodging with lower dmg output but better survivability than currently with DD/Acro/Trick or it will allow you to have better dmg output while still maintaining good survivability by running DD/DA/Trick or DD/CS/Trick.

Aside from PvE heartseeker spam on a boss, the DPS from S/D’s auto is actually quite competitive to D/D, and offers similar burst with much better utility. FS+LS deals similar damage to backstab, and the set offers much better evasion, utility (and cleansing), reliability, CC, and mobility.

S/D was gutted from being a very strong set because of its synergy with Acrobatics/evasion (and thus nerfing) into not being very viable, but I would still argue D/D is worse off through its sheer lack of anything other than damage which is ultimately similar or worse to D/P and S/D.

As others have mentioned, D/D is a pretty bad set relative to D/P. Shadow Shot and the stealth uptime from Black Powder are why the set is considered so well; you need the stealth from BP + Heartseeker because you don’t want to be seen traversing the map, whereas D/D needs to be in combat and land a hit with CnD to get it, and getting that close in anything but a + 1 is pretty much asking to die because of how fragile you’re going to be, even when building tankier. Shadow Shot is just a blatantly overpowered skill for the initiative system; sorry for any D/P players out there, but this skill is just too good to make D/D ever viable, even if Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger get reworked. Unblockable blinding high-damage teleport on 4 initiative is so ungodly strong for skirmishing that there’s no reason to ever really even waste the initiative for CnD or BP+HS when instead you get the same damage out of spamming 3 twice with free gap closes, blinds/safety from a next hit or for your ally, and a very powerful attack.

D/D has one benefit; you’ll be a better thief, given the time and effort to become better. If you play to even make someone even slightly afraid of you or kill some D/P thieves, you know you’ve got a skill leg-up on them. Every time I’ve been called out by another thief for losing as D/D against D/P and they’ve been willing to fight again with me as D/P, I’ve won. Messing around with some guild-members, I stayed in the middle of our “thief list” as D/D, and when one got arrogant after beating me a few times, I fought him as D/P around twenty times and he never even landed a hit against me in any of the games, while I continued to play DA/CS/Trickery signets. D/D might suck, but learning to do remotely well will teach you how to play the class and use your resources.

My advice? If you want to learn how to play the class well, play D/D for a while in hotjoin, and ignore the flaming from people telling you to play another set/calling you bad/names, etc., then if you want to get competitive or just slightly bolster your chances of winning, play D/P and press 3 to victory whenever you get in a fight because Shadow Shot is literally the only skill you should ever need if you use your dodges and utilities properly, and you may never get hit.

As a side note, while I am not much of a shortbow fan (I play D/D and S/D in WvW), it is pretty much a requirement for sPvP. The vertical mobility is just way too important for escapes.

Source: ~2.5k hours of D/D thief near-exclusively since launch.

IIRC tripwire used to have a damage component. Haven’t touched the skill in ages, though, so it could still be there or it hasn’t had it for quite some time.

Surprised I didn’t see this thread sooner.

Yea, this is a really stupid thing to change, especially given the fact that this is a change to player-game scheduling on something they have no control over. We’re talking about free-time accessibility, here and promoting fun and interesting play. While it might open up “more” access to WvW, the quality of the experience is definitely going to be lessened. As it stands, the days after the reset are largely the most action-packed, and attracting a higher player density – especially in larger and more mechanically-difficult borderlands maps – is something that really is desirable.

I was really excited to see population booms in WvW after HoT to keep fights interesting. Not only with the expansion comes new PvE content and thus less players at the start, though, any surge to WvW will be short-lived once people start burning out, and will only make the weekends less fun and make people less willing to play the game.

Chaba.5410:

Jana.6831:

Chaba.5410:

It’s already been qq’d about multiple times. No it doesn’t have to do with “being built around stealth” either. Your statement begs the question just what do you think engineer is “built around”?

Read a bit about thief traits – most of it is tied to stealth – take that away and thief has got no access to condi cleanse, regeneration, damage migation and so on.
Engi might have access to stealth but the class can well live without it, just like rangers and mesmers.

Not entirely true. If you make your build completely reliant on Shadow Arts, that’s your weakness. And you didn’t address my statement regarding thief having the best access to stealth.

I play without SA and have played without SA since probably a week after release. I think the line is passive and boring to use because it promotes not acting but instead standing around invisible and resetting a fight.

Sad part is, I still need stealth. I would forgo it entirely if I could. The problem is, I can’t backstab without it, nor can I place good blind/daze pressure off S/D’s tactical strike.

S/P is weak unless it ganks and P/P is binary with no real room for skill to decide fights. Both run out of initiative too fast and are dependent on spamming 3 for damage.

D/P is just boring because it’s meant for stealth campers.

Problems regarding stealth are dependent on what can happen while in stealth. For thieves, it’s ghost trapper being able to maintain stealth and deal substantial condition pressure and CC simultaneously, for mesmers, it’s massive ranged condition pressure and damage mitigation or outright prevention.

Trapper runes shouldn’t apply stealth; they should buff trap skill damage or apply an effect like cripple or poison or something more generic to make them a bit stronger. The decision, like other rune sets, should be based on build, with some reasonable alternatives or considerations, both with benefits and shortcomings, not a build based around a rune set.

Condition application should reveal stealthed players, and trapper runes should have a five second ICD. This fixes trapper thieves maintaining permanent stealth via the ICD and stacked traps, PU condi overload mesmer from being extremely difficult to deal with by making them face difficult build decisions of either durability or damage, trapper rangers from just putting a dot of traps down and intermittently getting stealth as a reposition tool/untargetable tool, prevents dragonhunters from stacking stealth on the traps, and so on.

Right now, traps and stealth are both really broken and just plain annoying. I get stealth attacks from the thief or the vision of it constantly phasing in and out, but sustained stealth shouldn’t be a concept that ANet should promote without fair and reasonable counters.

Farming Flats.5370:

NPC death glitch , i recorded the glitch … it was so funny

https://youtu.be/sg6Df8Tu6FU

Why is “Thriller” not the audio in this video?

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Lol. Whats even mor funny Is th cake gun has a projectile finisher on it xD

That actually reminds me about what I think is my funniest moment in GW2. My guild had a WvW raid one night near the release of the cake cannon and we proceeded to kill our enemies by firing the cake gun into various combo fields to deal leeching/burning damage and so on to our enemies. It took a long time, to kill a few, but it was totally worth it :P

bliss.4305:

I keep suggesting it and I will suggest it again… Traps have to “reveal” once triggered. Done. It might be an all-around nerf to trap builds, but I don’t believe Trapper Rune was thought out to chain trap into remaining in stealth forever while hurting your opponent to begin with.

---

A more thief-specific fix would be to straight off introduce a damage component to thief traps. Either a small damage just to trigger reveal or a higher damage (with reduced condi to remain balance) which would potentially make Trapper Power builds or Celestial builds even viable.

All trappers would be happy -> Condi trapper thieves would be nerfed -- eventhough its blatantly broken and should’ve been long ago.

+1
Any trap that hurts an enemy should apply damage and force reveal. It doesn’t matter if the thief’s defenses are in stealth; I play without SA on a reveal-heavy build and have few problems. Strictly speaking, the stealth only really matters in sPvP when you need it to get across the map unopposed for decapping. Not to mention that the thief’s traps are actually really potent in regards to effects. Just bolstering damage from them a bit would be enough to make them usable but not spammable with trapper runes. I’m sick of the attitude from a lot of the people in this community that thieves need to be superior in their tricky nature and stealth but should be superior at no risk or difficulty. Not saying they should be less powerful, but if thieves want to be tricky, they better utilize mind games or simply being better than their opponent instead of just cheesing stealth and facerolling the keyboard.

Even P/D dire condi is so easy that I have literally gone into WvW playing the game with my face entirely and beaten people. People have won without weapons, and so forth. Trap application for more stealth isn’t a good answer to the class’s problems.

How about we instead just get some non-stealth-playable options or better synergy while revealed via effects like RT for other stats or benefits?

I still would have preferred the elite spec to have focused heavily on benefiting from the revealed mechanic similarly to RT. Would have definitely synergized better with all of the reveal effects being released, and could have enabled the thief to change play styles entirely, especially given long-duration self-revealing effects and range be it from a rifle or class-implemented crossbow, gadget, etc.

I see that more of a berserker mechanic than one for the thief/DD :P

DD needs better endurance regen. An extra dodge is great and all, but it’s not worth an entire trait line. Anyone can just run Signet of Agility’s active and get the same results basically. It would be a fair thing to add more of it to the spec, but then it negates the purpose of Acro.

A buffed Acro and DD would be nigh unkillable, though when combined.

It’s pretty much a necessary evil for DD and Acro being bad individually as long as they’re designed around the same principles, which unfortunately means that all combinations of trait lines with the two combined will suffer from lack of damage or utility from trickery.

There’s no mechanically good solution for this spec in regards to its integration with the rest of the thief and as long as it overrides but simultaneously synergizes with Acro.

Serious Thought.5394:

alchemyst.2165:

Serious Thought.5394:

If I wanted to record some gameplay and post it on youtube, what would be good software? Is fraps worth the time? In the mood to show people Daredevil is actually very powerful, I just don’t know how or with what I can upload a video. Anywho, thanks to any answers on that.

If you have an Nvidia graphics card, see if you can get Shadowplay. It’s a very good recording software.

Seems I don’t. Any chance it will still work? Or is there another program I can look for?

Nope. Shadowplay works with the hardware itself, so not having the right card for it will strictly not work at all.

Fraps is good, but not free, and can get costly after a while. Depends on how much you want to record. Dxtory is pretty much the best free one, and one of the most comprehensive ones out there in general, although it takes some time to fiddle with the options correctly due to how extensive it is. Do make sure you’re using a fairly low-space codec, though, as the high-quality ones can take up several gigs of space per minute of recording. I’d also suggest you have some kind of dedicated drive or partition for video as to prevent accidentally filling yours up.

I think bandicam has a decent free recorder as well that requires minimal setup? I know next to nothing about it, though.

Fay.2357:

atlrising.5134:

Here is what my last ten matches looks like. I finished on top once, I am typically third and the rest of the times at the bottom of the list. Since the nerf I spend most of my time at extremely low HP since I cant stealth to get away.

And here’s my last 10 matches. I guess we can conclude from this that anecdotal evidence is totally meaningless?

Typically speaking, the less a player uses stealth (for those who have access to it), the less they depend on it, and the more skilled they tend to be, especially when it gets nerfed ever so slightly. This is the same for any innate mechanic which favors a particular class or style. Learn to not use it, and you do better when using it. This is also coming from a thief main since release, and why many of the top-tier thieves have left the game with the only class viability sitting in stealth/decap builds, and why I’m personally very unhappy with the current state of the thief class.

As I mentioned in another thread about the mesmer, PU/stealth overbuffed some aspects of the class that would make any changes elsewhere totally unreasonable. Like the thief, extended stealth access just put them in a state of controversial and subjective balancing (it’s been mentioned about mesmer being better at thief than the thief, this was true in regards to skirmishing potential rather than decap, which, while important, is a very boring and unflattering role existing only on principle due to one skill of one weapon). Reducing that controversy and normalizing the class is a much better and stable way to balance the class in the future. Stealth has been a basis for repeated nerfs of the class every single balance update since release except this past patch, regardless of the class’s abilities to perform otherwise (and even then, that potency was first to go), and with all of the new ways to get Revealed, focus heavily on hard-countering class mechanics like stealth attacks.

Consider if the thief had no access to stealth; would it be a competitive class? I’d argue that in its current state, the majority of players with a reasonable knowledge would argue that it would certainly be terrible in combat. Even now, the class struggles in fights except for very few build/situation encounters, but upwards tweaking is very difficult, especially since it’s very hard to even locate the target of where the tweaks need to be made when stealth provides a platform to create huge variances in combat potency based on the skill or lack thereof of the thief and its opponent.

Because of this, it makes buffing extremely difficult even if arguably necessary. In essence, this is the last situation the mesmer community should want their class to be in. Do I still think PU needs further adjustments for counterplay? Yes. But I think it is because of the boons it provides being random (and thus randomly difficult to finish off a mesmer, even if its location in stealth is known), not the stealth itself. Does it matter in the grand scheme of things? Not really, since most competitive builds are rather cheesy and act similarly. But I do stand by the fact it’s bad design.

Just bear in mind that the mesmer community can take solace in that its numbers can see fair adjustments into the future based on more solidly-defined numbers and concepts rather than the abstract of stealth, and will likely find its quality of life sustained or improved into fairness into the future, rather than very subjective balancing from a very subjective mechanic.