Hey, better start out grossly op and have then space to correct thigns down slowly,
This is how the thief pretty much started at release. Now look where we are.
So no, this is NOT what should happen, nor do I want this class to be FoTM ever again, because I do take pride in fighting fair.
It needed way more than a 10% increase. Why was 10% settled on on all the bad autoattack weapons for necro and mesmer, while thief is receiving 25%+ damage boosts?
Because the pistol’s power scaling was worse than Axe’s with arguably just as poor utility and suffered from projectile problems. Actually, the pistol is still really bad because Body Shot is pretty much the worst skill ever made.
Axe has crazy burst LF generation and with excessive damage would make it a safer dagger with range and no projectile deficiencies. While it might not be perfect as is, it’s better to see incremental buffs in the right direction (we’ll also see what goes on with the Reaper due to its LF-generation dependencies) rather than monsters emerge like PU mes and burn builds did after the 6/23 changes.
Yeah because PU mesmer was so good at anything besides hurting pvp crybaby feelings in 1v1.
So many Guild vs Guild used them, and it was totally meta in PvE.
In fact said “monster” burn builds are the only condition specs competitive and viable in PvE against berzerker whereas the garbage bleed/confusion/torment centric necromancer and mesmer end up as the weakest condi specs in PvE.
Except PvE is only a third of the game, and is not what the classes are balanced around, and condi viability (although class-dependent) as a ratio of damage dealt vs damage taken is the best in the game and has been for a very long time, making the content innately easier to achieve than playing glassy. The two stats will never be balanced perfectly and a meta will ALWAYS exist for solvable content, berserker or not, it will ALWAYS be a specific combination of gear and/or players. Would be a shame if necros or any class made a certain type of content exponentially more difficult to beat, not in time but actually chance of success, just because of a lack of certain options needed for a group. I think a lot of people fail to recognize the basics of problem solving and what a “meta” coined by culture is and constitutes of, and how they are generated.
I’m also going to say it now that condi specs are easier to win with in PvP modes than any DPS spec is for PvE. The last thing we want is the necromancer to be “OP” and have it get nerfed into the ground to a point where it can’t initiate a fight or hold a point for a few seconds because people are whining about it’s “OP” axe damage.
Incremental increases are better than huge buffs or absolute nothing.
It needed way more than a 10% increase. Why was 10% settled on on all the bad autoattack weapons for necro and mesmer, while thief is receiving 25%+ damage boosts?
Because the pistol’s power scaling was worse than Axe’s with arguably just as poor utility and suffered from projectile problems. Actually, the pistol is still really bad because Body Shot is pretty much the worst skill ever made.
Axe has crazy burst LF generation and with excessive damage would make it a safer dagger with range and no projectile deficiencies. While it might not be perfect as is, it’s better to see incremental buffs in the right direction (we’ll also see what goes on with the Reaper due to its LF-generation dependencies) rather than monsters emerge like PU mes and burn builds did after the 6/23 changes.
You merged a thread about shouts into one about WHaO… Roy said he was gonna have a look at that :C
I am disappoint
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Roy is the last one we want touching ranger.
I’ll gladly trade Karl for Roy.
One would expect to win a game with 50% more players on their side.
A lot of the suggestions made by the people in this thread are completely ridiculous and would be extremely and blatantly OP or have limited counterplay.
Here’s how to make D/D not terrible:
Nerf D/P’s Shadow Shot; Cost 5 initiative, 1.15 scaling.
HK Trait -> Additional effect to remove 1 condition on exiting stealth
Heartseeker -> Increased Initiative Cost from 3 to 4, modified damage scaling as follows: Below 25% = 2.1; Below 50% = 1.55; Above 50% = .82; Decreases spam potency/Fire+Air Dual Trigger + high damage from mid-scaling on second strike via a stealthed D/P.
Death Blossom -> Targeted 450 range evade lunge (Whirlwind Attack), applies 5 bleeding at point blank/130 radius, evade duration extended to full animation, no pre/post-cast animations/lockout. Bleed range restriction prevents spamming 3 to permanently evade + reposition + deal damage.
Dancing Dagger – Additionally applies 1 stack of poison for 8s, applies 3/2/1 stacks of vulnerability for 8/6/4 seconds dependent on bounce, heat-seeking like Shortbow Auto. A very usable hybrid skill for damage, heal cuts, and preventing escapes via cripple.
CnD -> Unblockable. Reduced damage by 50% if used while under the effects of the Revealed effect. Gives some better reliability to stealth while not removing counterplay (blinds, immunities, reveal) but not preventing damage and defense due to a block-heavy opponent.
Buff thief accordingly through better defensive/skirmishing traits and through better trait spread of existing effects and reducing dependency trait lines like Trickery such as 15 baseline initiative.
Problem solved.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Would have rather seen the boons changed to not be random. Makes counterplaying stealth a lot easier when random aegis doesn’t block your bomb.
It’ll depend on what the most reliable and fastest gold acquisition method can be optimized around. Until the rewards are known for all of the new content, there is only speculation.
Since everyone’s so up-in-arms about lore and what a druid should be… I’ll try and settle this by taking out-of-game definitions and in-game lore into account and explain why, logically, there is no need to force plant magic as the central part of what constitutes a “druid.”
Yes, since the inception of modern fantasy, the “druid” archetype has been associated with nature. Nowhere in its actual definition does it imply anything of the sort, though:
“DRUID: a member of a group of priests in an ancient British religion”
- Merriam-Webster Dictionary
So, ANet has to give a profession a name. One that’s magical, and still has pertinence to nature per the design of the Ranger core class. A magical being involved in nature? Well, modern fantasy dictates that’s kind of what Druids do. Okay, so we’re riding the modern fantasy train. That’s cool.
But even in other games like Dungeons and Dragons, which pretty much invented the druid on a mechanical level, the Druid class is very, very far removed from restrictions of just plants. High-level spells allow for the manipulation of time and space, planets, volcanoes, fire, and so on. Actually, a majority of the magic the Druid has access to are not plant-based, and the highlight of the class typically involves Beast Shape/animal transformations. So GW2 is playing around with the whole transformation option idea, but spinning it a bit differently rather than just straight-up animals. Either way, this still isn’t about plants. Plants being druid-exclusive is just as much of a spin-off idea in other media as the decisions made here for the druid not to be. There is no standard and there is no precursor that makes them unique to plant-life only.
Okay, but why not in GW2, either? Well look at the expansion and current lore for HoT.
It makes sense the druid isn’t controlling plant life considering the big-bad-dragon that’s invading Tyria has a pretty kitten ed-good grasp on controlling it, as he’s spawning sentient beings to do his will out of plant life and overpowered the sentience of an entire race of people he created to do his bidding against their will, basically.
So what you’re saying is, OP, that you would expect to be able to beat this guy on his turf using his magic that he has full control over? That’s a pretty big expectation to just be innately stronger than an elder dragon, especially since the PC/Hero everyone plays in the game really didn’t kill Zhaitan, for the heavy-lifting was done almost entirely by the Pact fleet ship.
As far as the italic font goes, great that it pleases you, but seriously, it’s annoying and difficult to read your posts and take the content seriously.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Stop rotating skills, then? The class wasn’t meant to be played with certain combos in mind. Again, the icon blinks when it approaches low duration. If it’s 6s, it’ll not be blinking when it normally should be. It takes just a glance at the “close” mark to know whether or not you can or cannot stealth up again. Or more importantly, just not attempting to until you’re in the clear and the icon is just gone, as that’s substantially easier. Someone is purposely playing mind games to screw with you and your rotation. Losing that is the same as them losing to stealth/teleport repositions and so on, except it’s easier to know when you can act because you have an icon telling you that you can or cannot.
I, for one think daredevil looks pretty strong and mostly hella fun, and if I get HoT I will definitely reroll a thief just to play it.
Having played it in BWE, it’s the worst-performing spec line for the thief. It’s slow, clunky, unattractive, and simply badly-designed and badly-implemented. I see zero reason to stray from any of the current lines because DD is so non-functional aside from condi D/D 3spam which benefits a bit more from this than some other lines.
Engi & revenant reveal spam might force you to stay away from SA
Based on the performance from the BWE, I think you’re still better off in SA against targets that reveal you. Staying alive for 6s without stealth shouldn’t be an issue. Really. If people can’t stay alive for 6s out of stealth, they’re bad thieves, or got ganked with all mobility on cooldown, both of which are signs of being a bad thief. As it stands the class can barely skirmish if at all depending on the skill level of the opponent, and worst-case scenario is you need to relocate when back-capping. My bigger concern with revealing effects is the incapability to get stealth attacks, although this doesn’t affect D/P much as Shadow Shot spamming is arguably the fastest burst the build has at its disposal per unit of initiative spent. DA/Trickery are by far staples and are not being moved out unless an attempt at a bunker build is made involving DD/Acro, but it’ll still lose to most things. The precast/aftercast delay on everything including the dodges was ridiculous to the point I felt like I should be swinging a hammer like the recycled hammer animations we have.
If the issues regarding absurdly clunky abilities/dodge rolls are resolved, then maybe it could replace SA in a reveal-heavy matchup. Otherwise the init regen from Rejuv is better for mobility purposes out of combat.
No need to mouse over the icon to know that it’s there, and like all effects, it blinks faster and faster the less of a duration is left on it.
I, for one think daredevil looks pretty strong and mostly hella fun, and if I get HoT I will definitely reroll a thief just to play it.
Having played it in BWE, it’s the worst-performing spec line for the thief. It’s slow, clunky, unattractive, and simply badly-designed and badly-implemented. I see zero reason to stray from any of the current lines because DD is so non-functional aside from condi D/D 3spam which benefits a bit more from this than some other lines.
The only real “combo” in regards to skills is on D/P which usually consists of BP → HS → SS → During bullet flight, Backstab.
Most utilities are either situational and do not combo or are part of builds themselves. This is on a build-by-build basis so it depends on what you’re after.
Otherwise it pretty much just boils down to quick thinking and knowing your abilities and your opponents’ abilities and cooldowns.
PvE, the easiest weapon combinations are S/P and P/P + shortbow. Optimal DPS is S/P for AoE/cleave, D/D for single-targets/boss DPS. Not dying comes from learning when to dodge properly and pretty much not getting hit, or just straight up using a tankier build, though I don’t recommend this as it makes players comfortable being tankier and leads to lower-skilled play in the long run or longer adaptation.
It’s been well-known for a very long time that durability is inherently a superior setup to play in a ratio of damage dealt vs damage received. Until you hit power values and scaling/damage modifiers way beyond the realms of what is possible in sPvP, it is always better from a numbers perspective to build tankier over DPS. Only in PvE is this flipped because the encounters are designed around being doable as any build/class and is done to speed said encounters up, not to make the encounters easier; there is a warrior facetank solo video of lupi doing nothing but attacking/damage skill use on a tank build for about an hour— no heal use or evades— and he does it with obvious ease and plenty of health to spare. Since sPvP focuses on staying in an area for points and simply not dying (as deaths are penalized), there is no reason from a numbers and design perspective to play more DPS-oriented. The only format with a definitive balance of the builds is WvW, although even now we’re seeing heavy conditions pressure due to the absurdity that conditions have become and the unbelievable benefits dire gear provides at next to no cost to damage.
The thief suffers from simply lacking any innate synergy with playing defensively aside from the nerfed-into-the-ground Acrobatics line with evasion builds, and perma-stealth SA. There is very limited potential to skirmish outside of stealth, and thus it’s just optimal to play aggressive and hope the spike damage is enough to quickly finish a +1 to keep moving to the next point to cap or decap uncontested.
Strictly speaking, the thief’s design, even the Daredevil’s, is poor in regards to balancing for sPvP/capture and hold due to the innate defensive requirements of the format that the class lacks on all levels of play.
Necro might is pretty much necessary though, considering the class has basically no damage modifiers. It shouldn’t be shareable, but if anything I’d much rather have damage modifiers than might just because might cab be removed and stolen; my thief’s 4x-plus damage modifier cannot be.
Might isn’t so much an issue as much as the mob encounters are. It’s a bit different on celestial ele, but that build is just getting sheer power from getting a variety of extremely powerful boons and inherently-high numbers and scaling potential per cooldown paired with impressive mobility and self-sustain.
No?… I like my silk scraps, thanks.
I’m trying to distinguish the fact that we don’t necessary need more buffs to stealth or that thieves shouldn’t feel cheated or feel targeted. Other classes and builds do depend on this as well and are similarly influenced.
Yes, it’s horrible design. But perhaps we can look to other avenues to request changes for the betterment of the class and all of its builds rather than camping SA/stealth builds? If they had positional revealing that didn’t affect our stealth attack capabilities, I wouldn’t give a cat. I’m not saying a build without SA is viable. I’m saying that it then doesn’t violate any class mechanics. These are two very big differences from a design and balance perspective.
Fine by me. I’m usually revealed by my own attacking the majority of the time. As long as I can continue to be aggressive and use my stealth attacks, I don’t really care if I ever enter a state of invisibility again.
Again to clarify: stealth is not the thief’s class mechanic. Primary survival or not, it isn’t a mechanic belonging solely to the thief nor was it designed to be.
Initiative, Steal, and dual-skills (albeit bad), and Stealth attacks on the other hand, are the thief’s class mechanics.
There’s a trait line that’s called Shadow Arts who wants to say hello — it’s been here since the beginning — was working well in the beginning — the addition of reveal ruined everything about it.
And it still doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t a mechanic unique to the thief. The mesmer has had PU and surrounding stealth traits as well, the ranger has had Hunter’s Shot, and so on. Shadow Arts, (old) Remorseless, PU, etc. have all modified stealth and given it benefits. Just because the thief has more access to it and more of an emphasis on it does not mean that the entirety of the ability is the thief’s. Stealth attacks are the class mechanic. We have access to frequent stealth because of these attacks as a means of proccing them, not the other way around. SA is an option. I don’t play with SA. Evasion during its primetime never used SA. S/P and P/P are designed not to use SA. the shortbow has no stealth access without a smoke field/blasting will reveal if it hits a target.
Frankly, I’d rather see stealth nerfed across the board into being not able to be stacked at all but with the thief getting access to better cleanses and getting big benefits from becoming revealed fully utilizing the in-and-out active gameplay the class was designed around utilizing. Given the ability to continue to use big damage and control effects like backstab and Tactical Strike every 3s without needing to be stealthed and some other buffs elsewhere like stability, I would gladly make the trade, because it’d especially help our PvP performance by being able to hold points and help our WvW periphery engages immensely.
I agree with almost everything OP mentioned above, and I posted something similar a while back. SA should be a bit less passive, but I would prefer to focus benefits from leaving stealth to act similarly to Revealed Training; a static bonus that cannot be removed but also cannot be stacked unlike boons.
A change I’d prefer to the IArrow is to make the targeted distance cause a scaling initiative loss based on the distance travelled/targeted, and then bumping up the max range instead. Right now, a lot of thieves just repeatedly use this skill to exit combat, and I think reducing the max range and init cost will only cause this to be more of an initiative spam-reset hoping you don’t get hit rather than just being a smooth transition to 1200. This would also enable the shortbow to be a much more potent close-quarters skirmishing option by allowing a reduction in the initiative cost on point-blank uses to allow for better blind use while also not burning an unnecessary amount of initiative.
The SA cleanse is a cool idea, but I think the concept belongs better in the Critical Strikes line. Hidden Killer is a very sub-par trait at the moment since CS is arguably a weak line in sPvP and builds already run very high crit chance and often do not focus on raw backstab damage but instead on fire/air procs and just innately high damage with HS/Shadow Shot spamming for damage. I’d drop it down to one cleanse on gaining reveal as an addition to HK, and put Shadow’s Embrace back to being able to remove one condition (DoT or control) every four seconds in stealth, since SA provides this duration baseline. Now you still have your sneaky and more passive options available, and you have the ability to bait cleanses on other classes for your DoT’s to get ticks for a while, but now crit strikes builds or low-stealth builds get some extra much-needed durability and a real decision to make between IP and NQ in crit strikes. Trickery is still going to be a “must-have” line, but now decisions can be made between CS, SA, and DA with very obvious benefits and trade-offs between each of them, depending on the need of the thief.
Stealth isn’t “our” mechanic. it never was, and never will be unique to the thief. The mesmer, engi, and ranger have had access to it since the betas, just not as much. The attacks are our mechanic, NOT stealth. It’s balanced and fun to be able to prevent a target from entering stealth; doing so to PU mesmers is incredibly satisfying. Preventing going invisible is one thing as it also requires a sacrifice to one’s build to slot in, too; denying essential damage and utility by forcing the disablement of stealth attacks crucial to the thief isn’t healthy, though.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Again to clarify: stealth is not the thief’s class mechanic. Primary survival or not, it isn’t a mechanic belonging solely to the thief nor was it designed to be.
Initiative, Steal, and dual-skills (albeit bad), and Stealth attacks on the other hand, are the thief’s class mechanics.
I wouldn’t care if there was a reasonable way of getting scraps that didn’t involve farming 30-50 of these things per effective ticket.
I’m not spending money on keys again. I’ve done so a few times, and I’ve also farmed them a few times for skins I particularly liked and/or saw massive resale potential in.
I’d buy scraps, but sorry, not buying keys. If the drop rate was what it was like at launch (I got a few in a week), then I can see this being fine as key farming via repeating the 10 PS is a stupid concept.
Hell, I might as well just stop buying gems if this is the nature of the game we’re seeing.
I wouldn’t honestly care if I could still use stealth skills. Stealth isn’t the thief’s class mechanic. Never did anything ever say it was. Stealth attacks, on the other hand, are. And being denied the ability to deal essential damage or effects is way too big of a penalty for no good reason. I get the stealth removal/reveal as a utility effect. It still shouldn’t compromise our damage and utility potential, and if it needs to disable the stealth skills, it needs to buff the thief innately to keep them relevant in the scope of a fight to counter senseless if not pointless uses of revealing effects.
Hell, I never stay in stealth longer than 1 second. I don’t use SA or any on-stealth effects. Nor do I run any stealth utilities. But I depend on that 1 second for my burst and CC.
1v1 in WvW means nothing and is the most brainless form of fighting. It’s 90% about what build you are running.
As a fellow DH servermate to the OP, I’m surprised they lasted this long “roaming.”
This is pretty much the conclusion I’ve come to after playing every tier. I used to do a lot of solo play, but it’s gotten to the point where pretty much every person you see who isn’t surrounded by more than three people has one of the cheesiest and easiest free-win builds out there. The meta of “roaming” is about countering the meta of “roaming” as hard as possible by removing the elements of skilled solo play. There used to be a lot of respect for solo players, but it’s long-since degraded, at least in my eyes.
I’ve honestly removed most of my associations from “roaming” to “havoc”, instead, and frankly, I’ve come to the conclusion that fights in the current state of things are just way better when in groups of 3-5, especially if you’re organized, as you can just tear through bad gank squads of similar and usually much larger numbers when playing well. I know my guild recently formed a party of four and ended up pushing our way through numerous groups of 10-15 and holding a huge number of DB pugs at spawn while the main blob flipped SMC. I’ve been also enjoying myself a lot lately as playing a front-line glass-cannon thief. Really fun to engage the zerg first at melee and with proper timing be evasive enough for a brief period to force all of their periph and front-line to blow everything because their commander just lost 75% of his health in under a second, just to disengage before there any real proper reactions :P
I’ve always kind of preferred playing on the periphery of larger things in small-scale rather than just strict 1v1’s, though. I do like a good mirror-match, but what I play is so far out of what most “roamers” play from even a weapon perspective that getting into those kinds of fights where it’s truly skill-driven is far too rare and frankly not worth investing the time and effort into doing for how rare they are.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Welp, the Scrapper gets AOE reveal and massive amounts of CC and durability. I get it for mesmers and annoying permaneny stealth decap builds, but why do we still have stealth attacks and steal-based damage?
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
1) Yes and? Eviscerate is a powerful skill, but super easy to avoid. That doesn’t make our Backstab bad. Not that many skill does a 2.4 dmg Coefficient.
2) Again and? I almost never use 3-4 HS in a black powder. I usually only use one on the target, then backstab (the stealth come after the damage from HS). With Hidden Killer you should have all the stealth you need. 3-4 HS in a blinding field is one of your tool, use in at the right time (which should be rarely).
3) HS Heroes think like that and they are view as noobs (sorry). HS is half the distance than Shadow Shot. SS have better damage when the target is higher than 50% HP, it’s slight lower when the target is between 25-50% HP, but the blind is powerful with the right timing. You should only use HS as a gap closer when you have a Black Power or when the guy is at very low HP. Don’t spam SS. If you use is right, in combination with other gap closer, you should never run out of initiative. This will come with experience.
4) The Pistol 4 is probably the hardest skill to use at full potentiel. It’s not a powerful daze, but it’s a quick one. One of the faster daze in the game. This allow you to disable a lot of skills, mostly healing skill. It’s also powerful to confuse someone when they try to escape for example. Finally, it’s powerful against foes that are trying to rez. You can go through stability or just keep interrupting something with no stab. At higher level, rezzing and stomping is very important are hard to do.
Each skill have a specific use, learn when and how to use them efficiently. Yes our damage wasn’t buff as much as other profession in the core specialisation update, but keep that in mind. Most team in tournament use one thief. It’s not because of nostalgia.
Pretty much this. And Shadow Shot’s initiative too high? Wut? I think most classes would kill for a spammable 900 range unblockable blinding teleport with a high damage coefficient. I would argue SS is the single most powerful ability the thief has on any of its weapons, even moreso than Sb5.
I’d prefer to see some of the utility be put into other lines. A lot of the goodies in trickery could be put into CS and Acro as a means of improving sub-par trait lines while reducing the “need” to take trickery due to how much utility and damage it brings. I’m not sure if I so much agree with making the +3 initiative baseline, but would rather see some initiative regen come from places other than defensive lines and Kleptomaniac.
Mesmer’s stealth shouldn’t be compared to thief. Thieves are probably the squishiest things in the game when you get one pinned down, and they have to be in melee range range to do any meaningful damage. Stealth and evades are really the only thing keeping them breathing.
I hate thieves as much as the next mesmer, but I can still look at things in neutral perspective.I think PU is overpowered, but my feelings against it aren’t as strong as most people’s. The real beef I have with the trait is that the change to it was cheap, and doesn’t encourage more skillful or interesting play.
Thieves have an incomparable ability to kite/dance around an engagement, biding their time to choose when to strike, able to wear a target down (or catch one warn down), because they have so much front loaded instant damage- having to “get into melee” is irrelevant. So yes, perspective is everything.
I know I’m truly in danger when I cross paths with a patient thief.
Mesmers have quite a bit of instant damage aswell.
if by instant you meant weapon skills tied to illusions that must survive in order to cause damage then sure. Our personal dps is in the gutter. Hence the crying over pu since it lets you stealth burst taking a target by surprise. The same principals apply to a thief need to always assume someone is watching waiting to get you.
You are literally talking about three trait lines that have never gone together and will never go together as long as the design of those trait lines remains. You’re talking about a build which would have been so laughably bad it would have and should have lost to most mesmer builds before the update.
I genraly dont give …. about what is meta or not but,
for shater build imho is much better BD instead of PU since it gives you stb and 90% guarantee stomp.For condi builds yeah, PU might be considerd OP
Also I rly hate vamp. runes there is nothing more frustrating than some rng proc interupting me and not by anything enemy has done but by my own choice.
This is also jsut my own opinion and many might dissagree, but traveler >vamp in any build.
This is my biggest issue with PU. I can’t reliably kill the mesmer when it’s stealthed or coming out of stealth, because a random aegis or protection can ruin any planned ideas The stealth duration is not a complaint of mine more than the boon gain making it very difficult to reliably counterplay. You can do this against a thief, because its in-stealth effects are not RNG.
As far as Shadow Shot goes, its damage coefficients are way too high. I play D/D and have zero respect for D/P players because spamming this skill is mathematically more efficient than even usingBP→HS backstab. I was challenged on this recently by a friend of mine playing D/P. In fights in D/D against him, it was relatively even. As soon as I put on D/P and started abusing Shadow Shot’s damage and blind for its extremely low initiative cost, I won every single fight without taking one hit… playing DA/CS/Trick Signets (for non-thieves here, that means a build with no stealth and no stealth benefits).
As far as claims of rogue specs wanting an easy “I win” button spec and vehemently defending being “overpowered,” most players which complain about the thief being OP or easy mode and then try the thief playing anything but D/P meta reluctantly admit that the class is way more difficult to play than their initial complaints. Scrub D/P meta/Shadow Shot of course is easy mode, and unfortunately is the only thing really holding the class in sPvP at the moment in regards to +1’ing potential.
Conditions were brought to the forefront to give players a chance to run something else other than straight zerk. They are going nowhere, and to anyone that says burns are too strong…have you ever been on fire?
For PvE only.
And have you ever been cut in half or gored through the torso with a massive piece of metal? People survive burning. Not very many survive being cut in half by a sword, impaled by a ballista, or shot in the vitals by a proper longbow and marksman. From this context of “realism”, engineer’s blunderbuss ability should one-shot-kill literally anything within 450 range. How are people in full platemail and thick leather being caught on fire so easily? This kind of argument is complete nonsense and way out of context.
I’ve had off/on issues in T5 the past few days. It only really flares up in combat for me, though.
Yea, its true. now take that dire perplex cheese to your friendly GWEN zergmander and see all your condis get cleansed by everything from everyone about 10 times per second, + try to go throug hany hot chokes or anything like that with them while your blink is on CD, go for it, I dare you. Lets see how that works out for you. Then come back here and tell me more about imbalance.
O add to that veil and portal on your utility bar, 1 of which will be on permament CD due to obvious, the other useless.
lets see how you function then.
The problem with this logic is that the GWEN/blob meta since its conception has been designed heavily around group mitigation and condition cleanses. I’m not sure if you recall the days of old before we started really seeing a developed blob ideology, but pretty much large-scale fights were determined by control conditions and applying them as AOE’s. As an example, shortbow thief in DA was the name of the game, for it could spam permanent, long-lasting AOE poison + weakness fields at 1200 range. When people started realizing control conditions like weakness and poison pretty much were responsible for their blobs dying, and that playing glass cannon builds is mathematically sub-optimal from a damage taken vs dealt perspective, GvG groups started thinking bigger, and started organizing massive condition cleansing potential to negate control effects/CC and maximize them against others. Ultimately, CC and mitigation proved most effective against the old strategies, and adding in some tweaks for better buffs and resistance to CC effects for consistency put us in Hammertrain. This evolved into PS with ranged DPS proving worthwhile as a means of forcing cooldowns before engage.
Additionally, one could also argue that battle standard is always on cooldown for the warrior, RF for the guard, and LF for the necro, as all of them have huge cooldowns as well, if not longer, and provide a one-time, high-impact effect at the expense of an elite, and that most of these builds are also support-oriented and are always consuming their utilities for group support or mitigation activated once, maybe twice, per encounter, and are used pretty much immediately off cooldown. This isn’t really any different from Veil/MI, if not slightly worse, since they pose effectively no personal benefit for the class using these skills itself.
Dire Perplexity is a huge problem. It really shouldn’t exist. Almost everyone agrees no matter what class uses it, it ends up overly-strong for its difficulty to play (easy) and play against (more difficult and build-based). Confusion as a condition needs lower durations and higher stacks and to not impact players using cleansing them. It’s supposed to be meant to kill/punish bad players swinging their weapons and using skills wildly, not to just completely remove someone from combat repeatedly until they can spam cleanses, or just completely remove them from combat altogether by not having enough of them. Since dire players are also so hard to kill, it makes swinging wildly a necessary tactic, but of course, it also kills the caster faster in most cases.
If the ‘free to play’ players love it so much they want no restrictions: solution is easy, buy the game. And don’t give me ‘but some players can’t afford crap’. While it’s true for some player, those are a huge minority. The permanent ‘test account’, that’s free to play basically fixes a bit issue: People don’t want to spend money on something they are not sure of. With the current f2p account, and if you are serious enough to want to wvw (wich is pretty much endgame content), then you gotta pay the bill. Make Anet a healthy company. That’s the sign ‘ok i like the game enough that I shoudl buy it’. 45 euro is a steal for f2p player if you consider how much they get.
It was ArenaNet’s business decision to offer these free accounts and allow them into WvW at level 60 just as it was their business decision to originally sell GW2 as a buy-once game with no subscription fee. I’ll leave it to you to spam messages at F2P players to buy the game.
And if it is not in their best interest for the sake of player revenue coming from WvW players to let F2P players into WvW, they should do themselves a service by securing income from a loyal fanbase than banking on the fact F2P players will shell out cash and buy the game.
Frankly, WvW is a reason to buy the game. That’s what I bought it for. Teasing EoTM and putting WvW behind the pay gate for both the health of the format and server communities would only bring economic benefit to ANet, and likely do a better job at doing so. WvW is a great concept, just like any large-scale PvP is, but if the gameplay itself is mediocre, it’s not worth an investment. New players can try out combat as F2P, try EoTM once they get the pace down, and see if they like the fights. They can then buy the game if they so please and enjoy its full features.
As far as countering players while they are still in stealth, I do it consistently and frequently. I am well-regarded as a thief for my history of frequently killing other thieves while they are in stealth, including positional backstabs. I would say in around 3/4 of the fights I play against competent thieves, I kill them while they are invisible using single-target abilities by learning their movement patterns on the fly and with a genuine understanding of how their build designates certain patterns, cooldown memorization, and so on. Strictly speaking, most thieves built on stealth do a better job against me by spamming Shadow Shot for blind pressure to negate burst than attempting re-positions and stealth play because usually I’m too much on top of them. It is in this echelon of play, by attempting to use an extreme analysis of the opponent that I designate as smart play, and PU subsequently negates this kind of play. Even if the boons stayed, but appeared in a specific order, I could determine exactly how much damage I would be doing, when the negation would go into effect, etc., as normal during combat.
Went to edit that typo above (PU vs Perplex) and forums stopped responding.
There was public discussion from the developers and internal testers a long time ago regarding the 4/15 patch and dire gear came out way early after MF was removed as a stat, both of which were during a different time when ANet was much more open about its changes and upcoming changes. Do some googling?
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
How is there a 32% chance at getting no aegis? Unless the distribution of odds isn’t even among the boons, I do wonder how you’re arriving at that conclusion.
A special form of wizardry that Iike to call ‘simple math’, though I actually did math slightly wrong. The real chance is 26.2%.
PU can choose from aegis, might, swiftness, protection, or regeneration. That means that every time a boon is granted, there is a 4/5 chance (or .8) that it will not be aegis. 6 second stealth means 6 boons are given. .8^6 = .262, or 26.2% chance.
A player can plan his moves perfectly and know exactly where an opposing mesmer is, time his attacks based on cooldown cycles, etc., and have his plans to counter the mesmer’s stealth and possibly the rest of his future-planned moves, get shut down by RNG.
This is so completely false, I’m not even sure where to start. Countering a bursty build has nothing to do with killing them in stealth. It has everything to do with predicting the burst and avoiding it. If you know where they are and what they’re doing, then it’s child’s play to avoid the burst.
As you said, since the trait is still good because of the stealth, and my complaints are about the boons, and not about the stealth at all, why are you defending the boons?
I discussed the boons because you made laughably incorrect claims about them. I wanted to make a point.
Single-target skills hit the first target connecting with the weapon’kittenbox. Even if the real mesmer is targeted, a clone-on-dodge or any clone on the side swung by will absorb the hit in full.
No, that’s only true for a projectile attack. A true single target attack, say corrupt boon, backstab, or many others don’t actually have a real hitbox at all, they simply apply the effect on the target.
The teleport is blink? As a utility, it’s the lowest-cooldown ground-target teleport in the game.
Uh.
Yes, Infil Arrow has no cooldown
Lol.
but realistically speaking, outside of back-capping or just running away from combat, this ability isn’t used in combat situations as a reposition for subsequent attacks or damage.
No, this is absolutely false. SB5 is used for repositioning in combat, and general mobility whenever necessary. You can’t just say ‘oh, this ability isn’t actually used’. That’s ridiculous, of course it’s used, and used well.
Dire isn’t mathematically the best PvP set ever designed? Sub-optimal? Are you kidding me?
No, it’s not. And no, I’m not kidding you. Dire is suboptimal on any condition class that relies heavily on critical strikes, and that includes mesmer.
They removed this set from sPvP because it was so overpowered on every single class.
This is a lie. The set never was added to PvP, it was never removed.
They did the same for perplexity.
This too is a lie. Perplexity runes were never added to PvP, not removed.
Are you new or something and have no idea what the history of the game is or how to optimize for PvP? —snips random ad hominems and incoherent grousing--
I’m quite aware of how stats work in PvP, and how to optimize builds. I do have what might be considered a fairly extensive amount of experience and credibility on that topic.
T1 might have enough keep-campers to sweep out a few mesmers. Otherwise, though, it’s widely considered as breaking WvW defense at the moment.
Really, widely considered as breaking WvW defense? That’s amusing. There’s a lot of things people consider as widely breaking WvW defense (arrow carts, facerubbing doors, various other mechanics), but mesmers are not one of them. If they were really that bad, you’d see threads about it. There’s only one thread, and it’s on the third page.
Except mesmers in organized play are a thing. Not in sPvP (okay, it is being abused in HJ by a few (I’m looking at you, and you know who you are :P)), but obviously cele ele facerolling is much better there when the format prevents so many builds from being viable due to innate stat problems. I know of many guilds who run three to five mesmers partied to maintain permanent stealth within a keep or SMC, chain-portaling inside, etc. Some go as far as suggesting a boon duration build for maximizing aegis uptime as to allow for them to be unhittable from a single attack from a sweep from PU. Unless you get a lot of guards sweeping a large area, you’re not going to find remotely good mesmers. Any mesmer getting swept is just sub-par. A guildmate of mine is renowned on our server for always being inside SMC and never being swept out despite our enemy’s best efforts.
Competent enemies will always find a mesmer. You can use engies with lock on, stealth disruptor traps, or simply just watch for the prestige explosions which, as I mentioned earlier, are seen regardless of stealth. I’ve never had issues finding mesmers stealthing in my keeps, but that might just be because I’m good at this game shrugs.
In conclusion
You’re wrong again.
Indeed, 32% is quite different from 26.2%. Apparently the "special form of wizardry called “simple math”" was too difficult for you the first time around. I understand you think you’re good at this game and thus think you are more knowledgeable than I, but please, do consider not being so condescending when you are blatantly wrong on things like mathematics which aren’t even up for debate.
In the other 73.8%, you’re getting one or more aegis procs lasting half or more of the stealth’s duration. Against a single-target hit for counter-play or burst, forced de-stealth via CC, etc., the odds of acquiring aegis increase tremendously as the fight progresses. It effectively nullifies counter-stealth tactics, which, if you have ever played a thief, are declared as being CC and burst, be it single target or AoE. With clones, obviously the AoE is more preferential. We can then of course look over the variable duration of stealth and its effects, as well as possible outcomes for individual cases of aegis or other burst-counter boons such as protection, their durations, chances of occurring, uptime, etc., but I feel like that’s too much math for this thread.
Your statements regarding countering a bursty build are not responses to what I mentioned; from the text, I read this as though you are talking about avoiding damage from a stealthed power mesmer. I am not talking about avoiding damage from a power shatter PU build.
I am talking about actually shutting one down by killing it, and as any stealth build is countered, that comes from learning how to kill it in stealth, which is genuinely the only thing that matters in both PvP and WvW; if a guard build was discovered with 100% damage immunity uptime incapable of dealing damage, we would see PvP comps be five guards; similarly, if stealthed targets could flip points in sPvP, we’d only see teams of thieves and mesmers running stealth uptime-builds. We’d also see roaming squads of five of said guards because the entire tactical purpose of roaming is flipping small camps and diverting attention away from objectives, fights, etc. It’d also probably be the most potent dueling build in the game, as it would exhaust resources and allow for strikes eventually or just simply never lose. PU’s boons’ unpredictability makes the mesmer difficult to shut down through intelligent counterplay or simply out-smarting them on principle that the mitigation is effectively completely random with no real indicator as to what can be performed. Even if the mesmer reveals himself for a very brief period of time, and the boons on him are recorded, within the timefame of a second, any plans of mitigation may or may not be futile in various ways with no ways of knowing which ones are. Beyond one second, the possibilities are further limited.
In regards to my comment on IArrow, you didn’t read the rest of the sentence. It is not a good enabler, and has the obvious setbacks compared to blink of not being a stunbreak, 900 range, subsequent worse limitations on climbing terrain, consumes global cooldown resources, etc. I know you probably think it’s a really good skill, because shortbow used to counter the mesmer as a whole through CBomb and the AoE auto, but any thief worth his salt playing D/P will not use IArrow as a reposition tool during combat to enable a damage sequence (AKA, switching from shortbow) because he will not have the initiative to reliably commit to a fight again unless the intention is an outright execution, in which case CBomb could have been used initially, or shortbow not at all and just spammed 2 or 3. It is used and it is useful for repositions, but only on the defensive, which is what I said above.
As far as dire goes, yes, it is sub-optimal on classes that rely on crits for conditions… when playing for condition damage. Fortunately for PU condi mesmer, it isn’t really reliant on crits. It uses one trait, which nets the worst DoT condition in the game at the moment for a very short duration. Not exactly build-defining, here. Actually, pretty much every single highly-rated condi roam build suggested for the mesmer uses dire gear. Mathematically, Soldier’s and Dire gear have been proven as the most optimal sets in the game in terms of damage dealt vs damage taken on all builds except the D/D elementalist due to boon acquisition offsetting these gains. It does less damage, yes, and I said that in my initial post, but the PvP-effectiveness has proven to be bar-none, especially in a build focused entirely on sustaining presence in a long fight.
Dire and Perplexity made it into the test server for PvP and internally. Dire was shut down almost immediately and its plans to be released in sPvP canned due to its blatantly overpowered stat distribution with no real way to make it fair aside from just reducing numbers, which then just made it sub-optimal no matter what, and PU went through several iterations with a planned release in the initial game on 4/15/14. Results from the test server and community theorycrafting from those on not on the test server created a huge outrage that proved mathematically that the runes, even in post-nerf state, were too powerful for the live game and would destruct the format as a whole.
As far as WvW goes, it’s a frequent complaint in-game. Much less pressing than bad/stale matchups, server population issues, siege bugs, etc., but one nonetheless. You also have some people happy because of it since they get to ktrain offensively and not need to worry about defensive measures since it’s likely going to be mesmer portaled, anyways. I know I’ve personally stealth-recapped a tower with another mesmer on my own against a group of about sixty or so trying to bunker in and fortify for a keep treb attempt, and with all of the people there, you’d expect one would notice or hit us from the mobility skills and sweep attempts provided.
But whatever. Like you said, PU doesn’t need the boons, and that’s what my claim is which is making it so ridiculous. I could care less about the stealth, but apparently any disagreement with you makes me deficient at math and an unskilled player.
@OP:
Either it just shouldn’t activate while stealthed to allow stealth dodges without being revealed, or it should be left as it is.
Having it not reveal and deal condi damage is a stupid idea and just as passive and cheesy as condi PU mesmer, except with even better damage. And condi PU needs a nerf.
I just really dislike how the primary source of damage and mobility on the weapon is through the same skill.
The fact that spamming 5 is often a good thing to do for damage makes me cringe a little, seeing as HS-spam is just as poor by design.
I would rather just see better synergy with just actually fighting in revealed than one trait. I was hoping what is the Daredevil would have played with this concept heavily as to promote use of this trait. Bonuses in general to being revealed would be a nifty concept, especially given a way to stack it without the need to enter stealth, as this would put a lot of clever play requirements on the thief and would stop the frequent get-out-of-jail-free stealth complaints we so often get as a result from a very stale meta and lack of other viable options.
RT on boons though, is an idea that while seemingly good would ultimately hurt a lot more than it should. As a might-stacking thief, I find myself losing my might stacks very quickly in a fight if my target is not dead immediately, otherwise BT is needed for a steal-back, but that’s usually blown on engage to proc thrill for the fury, and I run Trickster, anyways, due to limited removal options available to builds which stack might.
This entire post has either been written from an extraordinarily misinformed perspective, or with the explicit purpose of lying.
Near-constant Aegis and Protection coming up every few seconds
Near constant aegis and protection? Hardly. If a Mesmer with PU uses the full 6 seconds of stealth, they still have a 32% chance of not even getting aegis a single time. Hardly ‘near constant’.
as these boons randomly popping hard-counter any kind of strategic play,
This makes zero sense. How does a couple of boons ‘hard counter’ any kind of strategic play? What they do is give slightly more protection to the Mesmer once they unstealth, hardly game changing. I guarantee you that if PU gave no boons, it would still be a meta shatter pick purely for the stealth duration.
Combined with clone bodyblocking
Really? Try targeting the Mesmer next time instead of just randomly spamming your skills in their general direction.
blur, and the lowest cooldown teleport in the game
Blur and the lowest cooldown teleport in the game? In a bursting build? If you’re a power bursting build, you need greatsword. Blur is on mainhand sword, and phase retreat is on staff. You’re mixing like 3 separate builds into one in a sad attempt to call mesmers op.
As far as WvW goes, condi dire PU is the single most unbalanced build to ever exist.
Hardly. Dire is a severely suboptimal stat set to even use on a condie Mesmer instead of rabid.
Played correctly, it ha literally zero counters except for vastly outnumbering it, including directly revealing it through Sic ’Em, Analyze, etc, due to innate durability not seen on other professions with such access to stealth and its constant damage requiring no setup.
Literally everything said here is a lie. Revealing the Mesmer is a very direct counter. Even a tanky class will die rapidly when exposed to pressure from multiple people.
Also, constant damage with no setup? Condie Mesmer means shatter condies, and shatters require setup. The other primary application of conditions is the scepter torment block, and to say a reactive block-counter requires no setup is a unique stance to take.
It has become a staple in most organized group play both small scale and large scale
No it hasn’t. You’re just wrong.
keep and tower defense is almost ignored at the moment
This isn’t even remotely true on any active wvw server.
as there is next to always going to be a mesmer or three hiding somewhere to provide a portal as soon as RI goes.
This is why you sweep. Good players do it, and keep their objectives. Bad players don’t, and lose them.
With no tells on stealth, it makes them much more difficult to spot than any other stealth-based class.
This is a lie. Visual effects from the prestige can be seen even if you’re in stealth when you use it. Mass invisibility is a massive and obvious channel, and veil produces a distinctive persistent ground effect.
In conclusion
You’re wrong.
I won’t bother with triple-nested quotes.
How is there a 32% chance at getting no aegis? Unless the distribution of odds isn’t even among the boons, I do wonder how you’re arriving at that conclusion.
Because it’s applying a random boon, and attempts to shut down the mesmer with single-target skills can and subsequently do often fail. Any single-time skill— CC, burst damage, whatever— is completely nullified here with no possible way of knowing. A player can plan his moves perfectly and know exactly where an opposing mesmer is, time his attacks based on cooldown cycles, etc., and have his plans to counter the mesmer’s stealth and possibly the rest of his future-planned moves, get shut down by RNG. This is bad design that creates unbalanced encounters. As you said, since the trait is still good because of the stealth, and my complaints are about the boons, and not about the stealth at all, why are you defending the boons? If it’s not needed, and it’s bad design, get rid of it. The mesmer doesn’t need more innate durability, anyways. It has better evasion at this point than the thief playing a non-acro build, which is a given considering the comparison (excluding Daredevil which is functionally bad at the moment from bugs as well), and the mesmer possesses more innate health and thus ability to soak damage that is more meaningful than the 25% reduction taken from just physical attacks from thieves. My argument makes no sense? Please, do prove me wrong with game design and mathematics paired with a community willing to admit that PU is fine as it is, outside of the mesmer community.
Single-target skills hit the first target connecting with the weapon’kittenbox. Even if the real mesmer is targeted, a clone-on-dodge or any clone on the side swung by will absorb the hit in full.
My bad, distortion. I’ve been playing a lot of D&D lately. The teleport is blink? As a utility, it’s the lowest-cooldown ground-target teleport in the game. Yes, Infil Arrow has no cooldown, but realistically speaking, outside of back-capping or just running away from combat, this ability isn’t used in combat situations as a reposition for subsequent attacks or damage. We won’t talk about the range difference and failure chances acting differently by range increment, either.
Dire isn’t mathematically the best PvP set ever designed? Sub-optimal? Are you kidding me? They removed this set from sPvP because it was so overpowered on every single class. They did the same for perplexity. Are you new or something and have no idea what the history of the game is or how to optimize for PvP? There’s a reason the celestial amulet after the crazy buff was used on everything, but also why it remained terrible despite having overall better stats in PvE. It’s not optimal for DPS, no, but this isn’t about PvE. Yes, you may be able to optimize better for damage on rabid, but you can do one better on sinister. Seriously, Dire is the best in the game. The only reason it’s not used in blobs is because the blob meta was designed to counter conditions and perform as much negation and area damage as possible with the fewest caveats. This is why you see might stacking tank frontliners paired with glass cannon backs at range of specific classes. Know your history.
T1 might have enough keep-campers to sweep out a few mesmers. Otherwise, though, it’s widely considered as breaking WvW defense at the moment.
Except mesmers in organized play are a thing. Not in sPvP (okay, it is being abused in HJ by a few (I’m looking at you, and you know who you are :P)), but obviously cele ele facerolling is much better there when the format prevents so many builds from being viable due to innate stat problems. I know of many guilds who run three to five mesmers partied to maintain permanent stealth within a keep or SMC, chain-portaling inside, etc. Some go as far as suggesting a boon duration build for maximizing aegis uptime as to allow for them to be unhittable from a single attack from a sweep from PU. Unless you get a lot of guards sweeping a large area, you’re not going to find remotely good mesmers. Any mesmer getting swept is just sub-par. A guildmate of mine is renowned on our server for always being inside SMC and never being swept out despite our enemy’s best efforts.
You’re looking at just the prestige offering a small particle effect, here, which is easy to do within the moments of non-stealth by using a shatter simultaneously. MI can be done in stealth with no tell, and even then if casted using clone on dodge or blink, say, TP is easy to cover. Use veil and basic positioning? All sources of stealth in the game not requiring a point-blank acquisition (traited steal and not using DA/mug AKA nobody) have a very obvious indicator (traps, Black Powder, SR) or a very obvious animation (BP/HS/Smoke, CnD, Hunter’s Shot, etc.) except for Blinding Powder.
But yea, don’t remove the boons from PU despite it not being necessary to be so good as to be included in the meta people are saying doesn’t exist? I could have stopped there.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
It’s overpowered because of the boons it provides. Near-constant Aegis and Protection coming up every few seconds is absolutely insane and gives the mesmer much less counterplay than even thieves, as these boons randomly popping hard-counter any kind of strategic play, even when the opponent of the mesmer knows where it is while stealthed. Combined with clone bodyblocking, blur, and the lowest cooldown teleport in the game, the mesmer right now has next to no counter when in small-scale encounters. The only thing holding this build back from being “definitively OP” is that it cannot cap points while stealthed.
As far as WvW goes, condi dire PU is the single most unbalanced build to ever exist. Played correctly, it ha literally zero counters except for vastly outnumbering it, including directly revealing it through Sic ’Em, Analyze, etc, due to innate durability not seen on other professions with such access to stealth and its constant damage requiring no setup. It has become a staple in most organized group play both small scale and large scale due to its durability and extreme utility; keep and tower defense is almost ignored at the moment as there is next to always going to be a mesmer or three hiding somewhere to provide a portal as soon as RI goes. With no tells on stealth, it makes them much more difficult to spot than any other stealth-based class.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Just in to report this same bug.
As far as Savage Leap working this way, it must be a recent problem. I played S/S war a lot in the past and never had this issue once.
The animations on the evades and the staff are TERRIBLE. By far the worst of all of the classes and all builds. These need to be completely redone and made a lot more fluid.
No access to Fury and initiative restoration puts too much emphasis on Trickery, still. Not much really changes the way this profession is played in this spec, seeing as there are a lot of other equally-evasive ones that can offer still-better damage or sustain.
The Dash trait dodge animation applies an animation that makes no sense for any of the weapons (looks like Rush) and also removes any existing weapons from the character while dodging.
The rush animation is just extremely awkward and does not properly depict the responsiveness of a dodge or its proper animation time.
Most of the traits only synergize within an evasion-based build; aside from the leap finisher availability, there seem to be no meaningful ways to use this trait line with anything other than specs using an offhand pistol.
The staff feels weak in its entirety with poor animations except for skill #5. This skill feels overly-strong in regards to its damage potential and too easily-spammed with the other skills offering limited purpose in comparison.
Did I mention that none of the functionality in this spec synergizes with other trait lines found necessary or required to have a build be competitive at anything?
Staff auto-chain 3 comes way off of the character such as the staff is floating almost a foot forward. It looks poor.
Overall, in its current state, I’d argue that this spec does not feel like any kind of change whatsoever to the style of play for the thief except giving a few underwhelming options to x/P builds. It feels unfun.
The new F2P players are effectively the ‘next generation’ of WvWers and you want to stop them from experiencing the ‘real’ WvW? How is that sensible?
And can’t help feeling that your reasoning is flawed:
- Cheats and Spies: F2P may increase the numbers but it takes a dedicated kinf of person to dedicate his/her time to that activity. And I very much doubt that this has a pivotal impact on a MU. Yes – it is annoying. But I also suspect that a good proportion of the spying and hacking excuses I’ve seen are the justification of a loss that was always going to happen.
- Queues: Seriously? How quickly we forget the size of the queues into the borderlands in the ‘good old days’ in the first 2 years of this game. Queues are a sign of a dynamic and living game mode. Start praying for them, then start hassling Anet to find ways of improving the situation.
I spend 90% of my time in WvW. I want to see more people there across all timezones. Now that there’s a chance of seeing that happen, you all want to stop it?
It’s not the F2P players we’re worried about.
We’re worried about current vets abusing the system by trolling siege, wasting upgrade supply, spying more, intentionally rallybotting their guild on the other side, etc. etc. All this will do is further put off new players when they see how terrible the experience may be due to the number of people willing to abuse the system.
Every class except for the warrior has a method of interrupting or disrupting stealth stomping. And if the stealthed player is bad, the warrior also can, too.
Every class also has a guaranteed way to guarantee a stomp except against thieves, mesmers, and eles, which typically go down first under zerg conditions to begin with, and in a 1v1, can’t be attacking to rally during this period.
You’re not going to see a potentially infinite number of people spend $10 to spy or troll, though. When things are free, you will.
Completely agree. This change makes no sense. EOTM was a testing zone/WvW experiment zone to begin with. Let them get access here beforehand if they want to buy the game.
Well, no limitations on WvW.
Expect upper tier spying/sabotage to become 100x worse.
Just… ugh…
How is required to level to 60 no limitations? Not to mention the fact that they can’t use map-chat, nor whisper more often than once every 30 seconds?
That’s not a limitation, lol. It’ll just take them a week or two of lazy playing before they enter WvW.
Real limitations would be:
- Unable to take supply
- Cant order upgrades
- Cant build siege
- No visible commander tagsAt least that would stop the most trolling and AFK spying by f2p accounts. They could still flood a border and prevent gameplay, but I suppose that type of behaviour is impossible to stop unless you simply dont allow f2p accounts in WvW.
Precisely. I’ll leave this here:
It’s a shame. We recently got a video from Mr. Corpening about how ANet will be focusing resources to improving the WvW experience after the release of HoT, with very legitimate concerns and complaints addressed in his video. Obviously not all of the company was informed about this decision, or clearly the effects of a free to play game where players could enter WvW were not considered.
The concerns with the game being available as F2P for WvW are huge: Commander tags become effectively useless as everyone with two computers capable of running GW2 (something fairly common these days) will be able to look at the opposing commanders’ locations. This has massive impacts on the ability for commanders to use critical positioning elements to ambush other groups of players. While spying is already fairly common, this is one of only a few concerns.
More concerning is the ability for F2P accounts to deploy and use siege, be killed, and take of population space in the arena.
Entire servers now have the potential to sabotage their opponent servers by flooding them with free accounts and queuing for WvW simultaneously. This allows for players to intentionally lock out their opposition from even playing the game. This is anti-fun and completely against ANet’s philosophy of letting everyone have fun, and from WvW being about community strength rather than the ability to shut out other players from having fun.
Further, it is now possible for players to station alts on opposing servers to act as free rally-bait— kills that easily enable downed players to rally —to disrupt the flow of battle by enabling large sums of players to instantly revive by an innately weak player. The concern lies not in new level 60 players in weak gear dying easily, but again in sabotage attempts where players get a known targeted with no armor to use as a free rally source.
Lastly, free accounts may deploy siege and use supply. This allows for even further sabotage by allowing free accounts to hit the siege cap in essential areas through building siege in unhelpful locations, as well as pour critical supply into senseless things, such as flame rams within a held keep, etc. For the next 50+ days, we must now also face the ability for these players to queue wasteful upgrades before the auto-upgrade system takes place, even further at the detriment to WvW.
There is no real reason for players to be able to enter WvW without purchasing the game. This is a competitive feature that a very large number of players take seriously. Allowing for this is the equivalent of allowing players to queue for enemy teams in sPvP; it’s destructive, illogical, and removes the legitimacy of the competition itself through the ability for players to grief others via sabotage and counter-productivity.
I am shocked by the choices made with this announcement, and am disgusted that player feedback was not requested before making these decisions due to the very serious threats that can be imposed by changing the player dynamic as a whole.
I thus request the reconsideration of allowing free-to-play accounts to enter WvW for the sake of the integrity of the game mode. It is self-destructive and insulting to the community as a whole who takes this format seriously.
Shouldn’t be able to whisper randoms period; it just opens the door to rampant gold spamming. Free accounts should only be able to whisper people who have added them to friend list.
I agree completely. If they’re actual players, then they’ll make friends to whisper without issues and will get invited to guilds and parties as well. In some games, this is even required to whisper people, and those games have no problems with this from a community perspective.
I look at this announcement and feel as though this was a rash decision made by management to have a publicity stunt for PAX and to sell more copies of HoT in the future at release. This is a underhanded move and feels as though it was unplanned.
It’s a shame. We recently got a video from Mr. Corpening about how ANet will be focusing resources to improving the WvW experience after the release of HoT, with very legitimate concerns and complaints addressed in his video. Obviously not all of the company was informed about this decision, or clearly the effects of a free to play game where players could enter WvW were not considered.
The concerns with the game being available as F2P for WvW are huge: Commander tags become effectively useless as everyone with two computers capable of running GW2 (something fairly common these days) will be able to look at the opposing commanders’ locations. This has massive impacts on the ability for commanders to use critical positioning elements to ambush other groups of players. While spying is already fairly common, this is one of only a few concerns.
More concerning is the ability for F2P accounts to deploy and use siege, be killed, and take of population space in the arena.
Entire servers now have the potential to sabotage their opponent servers by flooding them with free accounts and queuing for WvW simultaneously. This allows for players to intentionally lock out their opposition from even playing the game. This is anti-fun and completely against ANet’s philosophy of letting everyone have fun, and from WvW being about community strength rather than the ability to shut out other players from having fun.
Further, it is now possible for players to station alts on opposing servers to act as free rally-bait— kills that easily enable downed players to rally —to disrupt the flow of battle by enabling large sums of players to instantly revive by an innately weak player. The concern lies not in new level 60 players in weak gear dying easily, but again in sabotage attempts where players get a known targeted with no armor to use as a free rally source.
Lastly, free accounts may deploy siege and use supply. This allows for even further sabotage by allowing free accounts to hit the siege cap in essential areas through building siege in unhelpful locations, as well as pour critical supply into senseless things, such as flame rams within a held keep, etc. For the next 50+ days, we must now also face the ability for these players to queue wasteful upgrades before the auto-upgrade system takes place, even further at the detriment to WvW.
There is no real reason for players to be able to enter WvW without purchasing the game. This is a competitive feature that a very large number of players take seriously. Allowing for this is the equivalent of allowing players to queue for enemy teams in sPvP; it’s destructive, illogical, and removes the legitimacy of the competition itself through the ability for players to grief others via sabotage and counter-productivity.
I am shocked by the choices made with this announcement, and am disgusted that player feedback was not requested before making these decisions due to the very serious threats that can be imposed by changing the player dynamic as a whole.
I thus request the reconsideration of allowing free-to-play accounts to enter WvW for the sake of the integrity of the game mode. It is self-destructive and insulting to the community as a whole who takes this format seriously.
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.