Guild Wars 2

Lahmia.2193:

SCVwar.3784:

The topic title says it.
It will give stronger incentives for both soft/hardcore wvw players to “actively” play WvW more, rather than leave after pip track is complete.
+ No more complaints about badges are rather useless
+ X #of badges per X# of tickets can change but I say 100 badges per wvw skrimish ticket seems fair for both players and ANet.

and yes I know this or similar complaint/suggestion has been made in the past, but I just wanted to keep this topic up in first page regularly.
Thanks

Soft and hardcore players stayed playing wvw before pips were a thing so I think you’ll find that they are the ones that carry on playing after they get their last ticket chest. It’s the people that just come for the tickets that are the problem you speak about, and the quicker they get tickets, the more likely they are to stop playing once they get their reward.

This.

Leave the reward to be long. People who aren’t interested in playing the game mode shouldn’t be rewarded just as people who aren’t interested in raiding or 5v5 cap and hold shouldn’t get the respective rewards from raids and sPvP.

Granted, it’s going to happen sooner or later since the profession design/balance is borked and likely will stay as such.

Ralkuth.1456:

Using thief as an opening to illustrate your love for this games PvP seems to be fairly obvious.

It means that the moderator who moved it didn’t even finish reading your post/comprehend it.

What else is new?

It’s going to have initiative issues. You’re forgoing +3 baseline and +2 per steal use from Trickery.

Stunbreak and life force on lower CD are imho a better tradeoff.

It also looks way better.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Alatar.7364:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Alatar.7364:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Alatar.7364:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Imo, I myself never back down from a fight on my Thief/DD regardless the class. Scrapper, on an equal skill level, should beat the thief, however, some of us want to learn to fight and beat you and the only way to do that is to fight you.

Call it what you will, but to be good or git gud, you have to learn to fight vs good.

I suggest doing that in Unranked matches and/or Custom 1v1 Arenas, rather than in Ranked matches which is, I believe, this thread about.

Lol i think its a general observation that may have been observed in PvP, but really in sPvP or WvW scrappers should beat teffers. call em brazen but even in PvP (both ranked and non) an enemy scrapper is still an enemy. I may beat him and he may beat me…only one way to tell. You may be surprised

I am not sure if I understood you correctly, but in case I did =D ->
I am not at all telling you that you can’t fight Scrapper (or anyone at that point) I am just saying that if you want to practice Thief (or any class ever) then it is highly advised doing that in Unranked/1v1 Arenas and not in Ranked matches as it is highly possible that the lack of experience with the class will cause the team Lose and generaly people play Rank to win. I lost many matches because people went to Rank to practice something they did not try before and we lost right way, I never wrote to them any insults but lets face it: It was totaly * * * * * and selfish decision of them.

In case I did not understand what you ment correctly, just ignore the entire upper part of this post =D

Lets just say were both out in left field,lol. As a thief main (in PvP (thief and guard main in pvp actually) and WvW, I fight all scrappers as the majority of fights end in my favor. Maybe i seem to fight those having a bad day or maybe they are terribad but with my mentality, if I win against them more than lose, ofc I will fight them. If its one I think I am going to lose, I have no issues bailing and finding a diff target until i feel brazen again or if I figured out their rotation.

The question is not whether you kill them, but how long does it take you to kill them.
In most cases, if not all cases, it is better to be off, as a Thief, decapping 2 points or +1ing other Fights, rather then spending but 30 secs fighting Scrappers or any other class that might take long to kill. If you kill them super quick then its ok, but even few more seconds means loss of points or just worse advantage.

Now it’s going outside brazen and into experience. Personally, If I can’t kill you in a 1v1 in PvP in under ~30 seconds, ill bail because either:

1.) If a scapper can’t kill me in this timeframe, it’s pointless continuing fighting them.

2.) My time/killing ways will give us more points elsewhere and ill come back to the initial point after.

Where I do not run sb, even tho I do have a focus on decapping, my focus leans a bit more on PPK so if I can +1 where there are multiple enemies, I am there.

The point is that 30 seconds is too long to be spending in a 1v1 in higher tier play. Every good thief will tell you this.

Like I said originally, I think it’s people being unaware of how and what they’re supposed to do with so many people flocking to the Daredevil, now. Gambling 30s for a potentially lost 1v1 is basically giving your enemies 30 extra points or more.

Straegen.2938:

DeceiverX.8361:

General state of WvW. Do you really think honorable players would play a game with this kind of small-scale meta? No way.

I don’t think the state of the meta has anything to do with treating fellow players with a baseline of decency. This is particularly true now that there is a good chance every couple months we may end up playing with those same players.

I believe we are all fans of the same game so we should treat each other accordingly… win or lose.

A lot of honor-fighters have since left. Most of the people still playing in small-scale are the ones who spearhead FoTM cheese/OP builds or just are in general annoying people.

What’s left is mostly the bile of what this community was, because those with pride left for greener pastures when mechanically the game stopped being fun in it of itself.

Straegen.2938:

I have been on all servers except BG. I have fought against all servers. I move around for the best fights, different kinds of fights and to play with returning friends though they rarely stick around more than a week or so before they move onto a different game.

saerni.2584:

NSP Os Guild.

Random roaming, kittening people off, and one of the more solid WvW fight guilds.

I don’t see you guys playing (I am currently on SoR). When do you normally play?

I was on NSP a couple years ago and it was nice then. Unfortunately this week NSP has been siege throwing, corpse dancing, etc against targets that fought well or were grossly outnumbered at near ridiculous levels. Doesn’t matter much on my end but not sure I want to play with so many friendlies that feel the need to be an kitten after they win.

General state of WvW. Do you really think honorable players would play a game with this kind of small-scale meta? No way.

I was assuming those four others were going to be attacking given the fact it’s PvE. It’s also based on their attack speed with no ICD which may be (and almost always will be) higher than the necro’s.

Again, nowhere did I say BM was good for a competitive raid necro; nowhere did I even say necro was good for raids. I just said it’s better than DM for damage and provides better utility, which is true. I’m not here to argue about necro being a good raid class, just that DM isn’t a good idea to take in general unless you’re really struggling to cleanse. But that should still command using consume, OH dagger, and suffer instead.

The lifesteal while not intrinsically strong is very hard to balance for PvP environments.

I think very low low power and healing power coefficients for the damage/health gain would be more appropriate.

I don’t understand your train of thought.

Because thieves fight you and they lose, they’re somehow overbuffed on the principle that they’re willing to try and fight?

Has the possibility of them just not knowing their counters or how to PvP come to mind?

Vampiric Presence applies to all party members – though my number is admittedly wrong due to the cap at 5 people leading to an effective equivalent of +200 per hit.

Not saying necro is amazing for raids, but DM doesn’t provide that much extra damage and BM’s utility is objectively better.

KrHome.1920:

Jarvice.4590:

But the best part to me is Unholy Sanctuary. A lot of the HoT bosses have some kind of ability that will kill you instantly. Because of Unholy Sanctuary you will survive those attacks!

I never had that problem. Necro is by far the most forgiving class for solo play in PvE content – even in full glass gear.

Anyway, play what you feel comfortable with!

Nah man, ranger/druid is way easier due to the pet durability and lack of aggro. Can solo world bosses on those things.

Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what you do if it’s for PvE. DM works if you’re capped on might/fury/enemy vuln. Sigil of Accuracy with Scholar runes will net better damage over Fire/Eagle, however.

For raids, the synergy is indeed the important part; it’s why rangers have been used in speed clear groups for so long. BM deals more total damage in a party due to the vampiric aura already contributing so much more damage for the party as it’s basically equal to +400 damage per AA, and the healing and sustain is nothing to sneeze at, either.

Well, you’ve pretty much figured out now why most seriously competitive players have dropped GW2; A lot of the defense in this game is passive and requires little thought or little resource management. It was always around a little bit, and bad players will still not do as well as good ones, but it makes for a large number of issues in the PvP systems that are for many, not considered fun or engaging. Even in the case of the Daredevil, it’s still not exactly requiring acts of brilliance to fuel repeated dodges and negate most incoming damage and recover from big misplays. All of the core builds are much more punishing of mistakes for the most part.

HoT definitely exacerbated this via the power creep – notably through just bringing in more numerous potent defenses in general to match the massive damage power creep, but the big culprit, passive defenses, is something which people have been asking for the removal of pretty much since day 1.

ANet refuses to let go of the notion of Build Wars 2, sadly.

I was aware of that – it’s actually where I got the name to begin with; Deadeye Della is in my suggestion’s post. We also have Deadeye Dunwell. I doubt they used anything more than the name in the leaks given the skill icons being so vastly different in theme than what I proposed, and the recent balance decisions not going in favor of what I proposed at all.

As for your spec:

Hook and Reel:
Gap-openers aside from P/P really don’t benefit the thief much, S/D would just waste initiative by using IS an extra time or steal when not opportune, and "Burn even more resources when avoiding steal or take extra punishment via a 20s GWell is honestly just not a good idea for the health of the game in general when you realize baseline endurance refills at one bar every 10s. This ability basically reduces enemy dodges to one which is quite punishing, especially given steal is a non-cast ability with so much extra on it as it is. The playmaking via the skill alone for +1 is also insane, and two Darts would be able to pretty much permanently deny a target a dodge at all without major CC punishment.

For the heal:
VFX, quote from you on the skill:
“rolling a small six sided human relic with the images of the human gods on each side”

RNG is in more than one location in this spec. The heal’s boons, Distraction Shot, Frenzied Firing, Dig Deep, and Tac superiority all use RNG.

It’s also NEVER a good thing for competitive play, especially with potent effects. One of the biggest complaints regarding sPvP skillplay was Fire/Air sigils providing too much without any way to deal with them or predict them.

Utilities
Coupling world lore to character abilities in an RPG almost always a bad move, and doing so only within existing lore is unfitting for the game’s current lore direction, the expansion content, and in respects to the greater notion that the thief has no real reason to be connected to it mechanically, or why gadgets of all things should be. If your utilities were facets or for the revenant, then I would see it 100% fitting, but it just has no context and isn’t fitting to the game. You might like it, and that’s fine, but it simply doesn’t make sense on pretty much every level.

The Elite
Again, this comes down to “fun” concerns and VFX. A lot of people actively dislike and disliked playing against this mechanic as a concept. It also begs problems in multiplayer scenarios, where the victim might be hallucinating while other players see him as just being a bad player spamming keys hitting air or something. It makes a mess of larger-than 1v1 encounter tech and opens up a can of worms for people bad-mouthing others for no good reason. There’s a mile-long list not to include this mechanic as part of a profession for many, many reasons, and at the end of the day, as you mentioned, it’s extremely difficult to balance; it forces opponents on the build-level to have an inherent strength or weakness based on arbitrary measures. A lot of the flow of control of the opponent leaves them, making the ability and consequently the profession itself just unfun to play against. HoT broke PvP and WvW for being un-fun. I see no reason to justify adding more of such mechanics.

Debilitating Shot
I recognize it’s a support skill. It doesn’t change the fact this skill is busted OP. I’m sorry, but unless it costs something like 10 initiative and barely affects the timers, this skill will break competitive modes or be entirely useless.

Rapid Ricochet:
As a protip, just add something like (ICD TBD) or something in the proposal to make it clear you understand its potency to help legitimize the suggestion. Even if you don’t know the numbers specifically, you should convey you know what you need to about the profession to not break it to be taken more seriously in general.

Waterberry Seeds
Yeah, Herald did break PvP WvW and is still breaking WvW. Further, FoN only applies to boons applied by the herald, not by anyone else. This is a seriously broken utility and again, would break the competitive modes.

Vicious Shadows
Should probably add that to the mechanic description. Dark fields are also very, very strong especially on projectile builds. Your profession already stacks a very wide array of conditions as well, which needs to be considered further in balance. I think chill is unnecessary and in general the skill doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the profession. Further, this goes back on the ICD thing; is there an ICD? I’d hope so, as unload, PW, and SA would break this trait pretty hard in Sinister/Rabid/Rampager gear due to how much poison could be applied from multi-hits. Limited opportunity to work with power/crit builds itself.

Punishing Pace
Again, bigger picture; you have the ability with Seeds to stack boons and boon duration, and this is a boon which is persistent on the character. You could easily swap weapons to say, S/P, P/P, or D/P and gain an insane amount of bonus damage from this trait.

Rifle and spec synergy needs to be made explicit with the rifle/spec or designed in a way to be compatible with the rest of the possibilities. There five other core trait lines, four other primary weapons, a number of overall kit possibilities, and a bunch of other existing utilities you need to consider first and foremost. Then you need to ask yourself if it works and is fair and fun for all other professions, too. A lot of GW2’s PvP right now isn’t fun nor fair, and is a major reason why people have left. Diversity and new things is great, but it needs to come with solid mechanics and a good understanding of the class and the rest of the game within the context of ultimately making the game more fun and interesting for everyone.

For one, the next spec has already been leaked – purportedly called the Deadeye which uses a rifle. I have no idea if what I suggested will have any bearing on that whatsoever. I think a lot of enthusiasm for suggestions and so on has dropped off since the leaks were announced.

I’m going to be critical of your idea here, and to set it straight, I mean you no offense. Having taken a ton of time to suggest the Deadeye in full detail, I understand the process of refining ideas like this can take some time and a lot of drafting. Friends of mine were just as critical in its earliest versions of the proposal’s development and so on.

As for the spec itself:

The concept just seems very disjoint and doesn’t factor much of core thief into it.

Hook and Reel is an interesting idea but needs refinement and clarity. Is the opponent repeatedly dazed/how does the pull mechanically work while allowing them to dodge and break free of the chain? How durable is the chain? How realistic is it that this skill will never work from the slowness of the pull if it can be negated by a dodge roll? Consider your interaction with core melee-only kits. How does a thief cope with the fact their gap-close is now a semi-gap-opener? Does the thief always want this? What about in other formats where stability is permanent? How does the pull interact with break bars in PvE or permanent stability in WvW? Is it a “single” CC or many small ones? Does this change the power-level of the skill in former questions?

RNG on a tight-control profession tends to not mix well. Improv is passable but mostly because DrD will run Phys/Deception/Venom/Signet or core thief Trick/Deception/Signet/Venom, and it used heavily for the re-use of stolen skill since Exec is mediocre in the greater context of a fight.

Cultural-related skills… I’d look into renaming and re-thinking your utilities. No offense, but there is zero reason a charr should be gaining boons from human gods, and so on. I wasn’t even aware these were gadgets until I started reading traits.

The heal is needlessly complicated. Extra VFX clutter hurts performance and the animation of “rolling” something would take too long to make it worthwhile in PvP environments. I’d say keep RNG boons to mesmers (which I still think shouldn’t exist) and pursue some other option entirely.

Hallucination mechanics aren’t really fun for PvP environments and tbh made me and some other players noxious with the VFX. This would get really out of hand in WvW. Give toxic dart some kind of power scaling; the base damage is terrible even at capped stacks for anything other than Dire/TB.

Debilitating Shot and Fleeting Confusion really start breaking things in WvW.

Clarify the mechanics of Muscle Memory.

Rapid Ricochet is overpowered for Shortbow and P/P if it’s 100%.

Waterberry Seeds needs a clarification – Boons or Buffs? Buff extensions would break all forms of PvP such as EP/DP warrior and so on. Boons would be broken quickly via Dig Deep + Tac Superiority. Again, more RNG stuff, this time doubly-stacked. I should beat an opponent by out-playing him and vice versa where everyone’s moves are calculated, not having random super-powered attacks.

Vicious Shadows and ooze have no descriptors at all. What does this trait do?

Punishing Pace is downright overpowered given +boon duration gear on top of aforementioned boon-stacking problems with waterberry seeds.

The idea is unique which is nice and Hook and Reel has some very interesting playmaking possibilities within sPvP, but the idea needs a lot of refinement and in general some better planning about the interactions with the rest of the thief’s kit as well as the rest of the game, be it in sPvP, WvW, PvE, raiding, etc.

Cause you’re not traiting damage while playing a defensive-heavy tempo-oriented kit, and/or are not fully utilizing your AA chain and are depending on only ever using FS/LS or just the first two hits of the AA sequence.

S/D only works when managing your opponents’ cooldowns and creating your own openings. The style has changed, and it is slower to kill due to its lack of burst, but it’s still plenty usable.

I regularly auto for 7-10k on each of the latter two hits of the chain in WvW which is often plenty to reach an execute given enough whittling down.

I think S/D’s biggest problem is initiative costs and cooldowns of most of the other class’ being too low given elite specs providing so much low-cooldown utility and damage with very few tell options.

Most of S/D is well-done in it of itself, however. Toying with numbers tweaks to it alone will just keep it either OP or perpetually weak.

Celsith.2753:

Why dont you just make a party with the other people that were excluded and don’t want to be solo?

“Because they’re bad.”
…
“Oh, wait.”

zinkz.7045:

DeceiverX.8361:

Well-designed professions.

WvW has never had well designed professions, it had whatever the result was of professions designed around 5 man PvP conquest.

It’s funny because they somehow managed to make WvW more balanced and more diverse overall than sPvP for the entire duration of this game’s lifespan until HoT.

Most of the core mechanics are well-designed, if not a little cheesy and in need of some tweaks in some areas.

The whole dynamic of PvP post-HoT has changed to be something which even the (ex-) pro players (RIP) have repeatedly complained about. It has less to do with numerical balance (as elites are fairly tight in this regard) but the fact that the gameplay itself has faltered and most of the skill and intrigue of PvP’ing in GW2 as a whole has since been removed due to bad profession design via the elites and a few other areas.

Well-designed professions.

Puck.9612:

DeceiverX.8361:

A man with one arm isn’t going to make it to the MLB, regardless of how much he loves baseball. It doesn’t change the fact he can still be respected tremendously by the baseball community and be an inspiration to other people for playing well in a lesser league.

You need to look up Jim Abbott. He’s one of less than 300 people that have thrown a no hitter in MLB. He didn’t demand people make accommodations for him despite being born with 1 hand, he stepped up and showed them what he could do.
Hell the opposing teams would specifically try hitting it to him hoping he couldn’t get his glove on in time, but he would snatch up the ball, pull the glove off with his arm pit, and throw it to first before they could run it.

That’s what happens when a person puts in the effort instead of sitting around complaining that the world owes them something.

It’s funny because I was thinking that a pitcher could possibly do this, but I said to myself at the time of writing the above, “nah, I doubt that’s happened.”

Does not detract from the point; these things can be overcome if and when one doesn’t hide behind one’s shortcomings as an excuse not to do better.

babazhook.6805:

Crinn.7864:

SkyShroud.2865:

Turk.5460:

SkyShroud.2865:

Dire isn’t strong, tb is.

My condi necro in all exotic dire gear begs to differ. I literally smash buttons on cooldown and win fights that I clearly should not be winning.

That has nothing to do with dire. Dire exist since 4 years ago, it is the boost to conditions through the balance that makes you win easily, absolutely nothing to do with dire. Then again, even before hot, a necro could melt people easily with condition on roaming but it was nerfed after that.

It has everything to do with Dire/TB. In WvW condi builds are the tankiest offensive builds available. In sPvP condi builds are squishier than their power counter parts for every class except Mesmer. Why is there such a difference between the modes? Hint: gear stats.

As pointed out your post a contradiction. Dire armor does little to create a tanky build against another condition build. The more condition builds there are the less tanky the build becomes in relative terms.

What COUNTERS condition builds is not toughness or adding toughness. If you want to counter a condition build you trait cleanse , vitality and healing from a defensive perspective, or try and pump out more damage over a shorter period of time.

That said If a person does sacrifice toughness so as to battle a DIRE user with those other stats , then he in turn becomes more vulnerable to power builds.

A necro condition build in carrion facing a Necro condition build in Dire is just as tanky given the added toughness the Necro in dire has does little to protect against condition damage. There certainly less raw damage taken due to that dire but that more then made up for by the added power of the necro in Carrion. There no practical reason in such a fight that Necro in Dire should outlast the one in carrion.

You do know that Dire has secondary stat vitality and that the only harder counter to such a build would be a nomad’s full-tank, right?

You do also know that vitality counters power damage efficacy, right?

You do realize your entire argument here is based on condi vs condi, while Dire is the hardest-countering set to power builds out there due to its damage:EHP ratio, right?

The argument for comparison would be more consistent for Carrion vs Valkyrie, not Dire.

And there is very good reason to suspect that Dire would outlast carrion in a fight; Dire ticks for more damage from utility consumables which scale both toughness and vitality into condition damage, and the power component of carrion would be substantially negated into rough equality hit-for-hit due to carrion’s lack of toughness not inhibiting the damage of no-power dire.

Which of course, depending on the profession, gets even more favorable for dire the more might which is stacked, given how %-wise, the efficiency favors higher toughness to higher base power.

Mathematically, Dire is and has been a problematic stat distribution since its inception. The only thing holding it back was the lower damage/burst throughput of condition builds early on. Even still, stat-for-stat, it’s always had the best efficiency in every way compared to other options, TB aside (although even some will argue Dire is still better than TB due to its higher tick damage and base HP).

I’ll politely summarize my infracted post which called out the OP on every point he made. The sensitivity of people on these boards these days is unreal.

For one, you’re not entitled to anything, and this isn’t a violation of the game’s ToS. There’s literally zero purpose in complaining and nobody supports someone who will carry on in map chat for hours slandering respected leading figures.

If you’ve had a rough life, it doesn’t matter. You’re a victim of some unfortunate circumstances, but there are many, many other players who are also deaf and make it work. I’ve met a few. Coming from someone who is also disabled: don’t let it define who you are as a person. If you use your disability as an excuse for anything at all, it already verifies the point others will make that you’re not qualified to run with them. Overcome it. People won’t give a kitten if you can’t hear if you play well and still promote the squad. Join the TS and tell the leader you’re deaf but still show up to show support. Showing you’re willing to support the tag means you’re willing to do what it takes to succeed. Be a better person.

If there was an ad which guaranteed commander-led groups (which I doubt), that was still fulfilled. You ran with a commander for a period of time. I know for a fact any such ad which is already a myth wouldn’t guarantee you’d be free to join any, indefinitely for obvious legal reasons.

You’re not getting re-invited and are being kicked because of your attitude. You don’t slander server leaders that are trying to do everyone else on the server a service by trying to win. Common decency, especially to do so for hours on end in public. Odds are, your name has made its rounds on the server and you are seen in a horrible light within the community. Sorry to say that unless you plan to actually improve the situation rather than playing victim of a circumstance you perpetuated and let the time pass to heal wounds, you’re probably going to be insta-booted from squads.

The commander who kicked you already made it clear he didn’t want anything holding his group back. With your attitude, I’d never invite you to a squad, because you are acting like the type of player which holds groups back.

Squads aren’t required to interact with other people. You seem to lack a basic understanding of the game’s mechanics to not realize this. A lack of game knowledge and proficiency paired with unwillingness to accept team requirements or attempt to resolve problems just screams that you’re not the type of player that is suitable for organized raids, which is fair justification as to why you got kicked to begin with.

As a fellow disabled person, if you keep hiding behind your disability as a poor excuse, you’re going to struggle a lot harder in the real world later on. Life isn’t fair. The world doesn’t care and will turn without you. Prove to other people you’re worth making accommodations for by being an equal to everyone else, whatever it is it takes, and get there with respect instead of complaining and trying to take some kind of moral high ground.

A man with one arm isn’t going to make it to the MLB, regardless of how much he loves baseball. It doesn’t change the fact he can still be respected tremendously by the baseball community and be an inspiration to other people for playing well in a lesser league.

I mean it is possible, though it’d be pretty brainless play from the other guy and would require no cleanses at all.

Improvisation + Tooth Stab would get you there.

Panda.1967:

So out of every class, thiefs are the only ones who even came close to having an elite spec that isnt a direct improvement… with engineer as a close second due to the sheer uselessness of their function gyro.

I’m sorry but this is just massively false.

In the competitive formats, core thief is absolute trash and Daredevil borders on being overpowered. DrD is already stupidly close to providing the same damage as core thief with everything about the core improved.

At this point, every spec has been powercreeped into oblivion. Until the DC buffs, Reaper was honestly best-matched to core in terms of power. Obviously no longer.

Ramoth.9064:

Everything popular should be baseline. Gotcha.

Did you even read my post?

saerni.2584:

Deceiver what is your opinion on significantly reducing cleanse for damage conditions and retooling conditions to balance around less cleanse and invulnerability generally?

It’d have to come with stipulations and a lot of further development. One of the biggest issues with condition damage is how cover conditions and control conditions can load up the queue to cleanse subsequent DoT ones, and how those cover and control effects have a very powerful effect on combat even without the DoT component. For example, when I fight on my power reaper vs a thief, it’s effectively a hard requirement that I immediately burn Suffer on Lotus Poison to cleanse the weakness in order to deal any damage, while also hitting the thief with a damage reduction and an endurance cut to keep their evades low in order to out-trade the incoming damage and keep in range/applying pressure. I cannot win with Lotus Poison applied to me, straight up. I’ll be out-paced in damage and out-evaded baseline. Most builds need to do the same for LP and various other control-applying traits such as an ele or engineer which is cooldown-dependent on Chill. It’s hard to work out timings when there are “must-cleanse-immediately-or-die” control effects which get applied super early and can snowball a fight. This is especially true for power builds in the case of passive or instant weakness, which comes from a number of traits from a number of professions.

If we were to go that route, we’d need overall an increased number of cleanses readily-available to remove control conditions and CC effects (especially since their increased accessibility since HoT), while splitting up DoT ones. While this may provide a better state of balance among a lot of builds, it potentially upsets the balance to some lesser-known builds, as these may be missing some of those “essential” cleanses that are readily-or-just-adequately found in the meta. Because I think this would ultimately yield a net decrease in build diversity on the fringes, I can’t totally support the notion.

Frankly, if we were to take a “simplistic” blanket-fix or re-design towards making DoT a viable means of play without breaking it, I’d simply delete the condition damage stat as a whole, and change all condis to just supplying DoT based on power, have it be affected by toughness, remove +/- duration foods/stats/traits (or re-brand control conditions/DoTs as something else entirely to allow +/- on control-only), and remove their capability of being cleansed. Then just re-tool some gear combos to feature kits like Power/Expertise/Precision or Power/Expertise/Vitality or what have you. Now kits can be played for either type of damage, and pretty much identical numbers achieved while control effects can be easier-managed without having to worry about cover conditions, etc.

This also fills the void for hybrid builds, as then they benefit from all of the offensive stats, and can tone and shape their builds to be more-or-less focused on either the DoT or instant-damage side of things. As it is right now, hybrids pretty much end up being worse at both because they can’t take advantage of the multiple stats needed for power damage worthwhile, or waste stats if their condition damage scaling is low and their power damage scaling is higher.

Overall, I think the removal of Dire/TB is the most realistic option of everything, as the stat combos are only really used in WvW, and quite frankly, break WvW. There are some problem-child condition abilities, but most of the condition-overpowered-ness comes from Dire/TB simply just out-tanking everything while simultaneously bursting things down. I’m not strictly opposed to mass-DoT bursts, but being mathematically incapable of matching that damage:defense ratio on any other possible set is kind of stupid.

Really depends on the thief’s weapons and your build, honestly. Celestial/offtank roamer or aurashare should be able to just facetank and out-sustain most thieves when played and rotated well.

FA and D/D are both pretty good options to counter a thief playing D/D power stab from the shocking aura interruption on their combo as well as good ranged blinds. Most people don’t play D/D power, though.

Against a D/P thief which is a lot more common (likely what you fought), it’s a lot more difficult, but crit damage immunity traited via Earth is strong to one that’s building power-stab. Signet power-stab D/P is pretty much entirely a gamble on how much health and armor its opponent has and since the AA buffs is also very easy to play and provide follow-through damage with. Just how it is.

Staff… not much you can do aside from dodge vault at the right time (practice this) and apply CC at the right time as well while trying to hit them hard and fast in the interim. This is also very tough if they’re good due to how much damage negation it has available.

Most things in general just crush berserker/DPS ele given the asinine damage buffs to the elites and how forgiving they are.

I mean if they do it well it could be a functional utility weapon with trait options for both.

I don’t see a reason why it needs to inherently favor one or the other so long as options for both are logical and accessible.

Which is pretty much the basis of what I proposed.

Since it’s ANet, I’m going to have to expect it’ll be a condi-heavy kit with some kind of high-power stealth attack just to further break the game on both ends.

I’d have to argue it’s a lot in Trickery that makes the thief usable/strong. Preparedness is the most obvious, but playing without steal cooldown reduction, ToTC, LA, Klepto, and so on takes a lot from the thief in general.

To put anything baseline begs for everything baseline, because the whole sum of Trickery is still worth taking in 99% of builds because most of what it brings is essential in terms of just general gameplay.

And if everything is baseline to make everything no longer need Trickery, well, then you make the thief overpowered by basically giving it four trait lines.

Really, some of these need to be better-put in some existing competing minor traits in the other lines and soften up Trickery so that people don’t feel as pressured while not stripping viability from the thief.

For example, Unrelenting Strikes in the Crit Strikes line is worse than the fury gained from ToTC in terms of uptime, and is much less useful in PvP environments since it’s proc-based on enemy HP rather than on-steal to make it useful on engage (which is what matters more for the thief in most scenarios).

Some kits also just need some initiative QoL tweaks to make them more functional in general which would drop dependency on Trickery as a whole. Condition cleanses need to be more accessible outside of just purely-defensive lines, and so on.

TR is over-loaded but a lot of the other lines are just very weak at even their concentrations, and weaker-still at things they lack the support for handling.

babazhook.6805:

You contradict youself in this one post and did not refute anything of what I said. You know full well that the damage scaling of classes across the board were scaled down in PvP. This is why a power thief could never get the bursts of damage that he can in WvW. For the purposes of PvP dire did not meet this model. It is NOT because it OP. It is because PvP is an artifical construct.

This is why they used the amulet system. They wanted to try and nromalzie builds as much as possible.

If you are going to create a system that says " we want to keep damage output and the ability to mitigate the same withing this range" then you can not single out specific sets while leaving others. I suggest to you had there been the same level of damage output one can get as in WvW in PvP from power builds Dire would have been allowed THEN as well ands no one would have been crying that it was OP.

Dire existed in WvW since I first logged in to that format. There were very few that used it . Why would that be the case if it was OP? The fact is it was totally outclassed by power builds which could always pump out more then enough damage to bring a dire user down in short order.

The change that occurred that has all of these people whining about dire was not Dire being “reintroduced” or “made more powerful” . It was always there. The change that happened was condition damage output was improved. Power damage output was also improved which is why there now so many tanky power builds. That condition damage may have made greater gains overall merely reflects how far behind it was in the first place.

1.) Damage scaling wasn’t reduced in sPvP as a whole; only a few problematic skill ssaw cuts, and typically, like in the case of CnD, these cuts ended up being fixed by other implementations and no longer necessary (like implementing the Revealed and CiS fixes to offset perma-stealth free-casting CnD-spam CiS SA power builds). The only difference is and has been stat amounts allocated via amulets vs armor.

2.) No, they originally launched the game with six amulet slots, just like armor. They brought it down to one to reduce complexity because the stat granularity wasn’t much of a factor.

3.) Dire didn’t exist at launch or even near it. Dire was an afterthought brought into the game when they removed the Magic Find stat from armor and needed a new set to compensate. Condition builds were slow to pick up and at the time under-performing in PvE as a consequence so they brought the kit to PvE only. At the launch of the stat, ANet PvP developers stated the set was too powerful for sPvP when people asked for it to be moved there. This was the same release as Perplexity being released into sPvP and then also removed because they too were also too overpowered to be used in the format.

4.) Yes, they wanted to keep damage output and capacity to mitigate it within a certain range within sPvP. Understand the sPvP developers have no bearing on what happens in PvE or to the professions in general. The best they have historically been able to do is change amulets and problematic runes/sigils to change the overall pace of the game. Else it goes through PvE testing justification. Any former ANet developer and even some very simple reading on reddit will confirm this.

5.) Dire was not outclassed by power builds. People just didn’t play them much initially, and the better players kept to the power kits they were already good at and simply preferred. Dire builds were and have been dominant in small-scale since early 2013, and honor-duel players would be quick to immediately DQ and gank people who brought something like a Dire thief or mesmer to a duel because doing so was a sign of disrespect and cheese. The condi hate is literally years-old with the dueling community.

6.) Nobody is inherently angry about condition damage going up, but how safe the builds are when played as durably as they are. I assure you, there is absolutely no comparison to a Soldier build vs a Dire one. My reaper pushing 4k power in Soldier’s gear full-combos for maybe 8-10k damage against a squishy opponent. I can tick 6k on a dire build in two seconds with one skill and have the same defenses that also ignore armor, bonus toughness, and protection.

In terms of raw efficiency and ease-of-use, there is absolutely no comparison to be made. Dire/TB need to go if we’re going to allow buffed condi damage.

babazhook.6805:

saerni.2584:

Actually they removed Soliders and Dire from sPvP to reduce bunker meta and promote a faster rate of kills (though HoT brought some bunker back).

The reason to take Dire as a WvW roamer has far more to do with needing to survive 1v3 or 1v4 long enough to retreat. Sure, I’d spec for more damage but I find in many situations survivability is more important (harder to kill people but I’m not running a one-shot build—if I one shot you that’s on you).

Correct. This claim made all the time, that being “they had to remove DIRE from PVp because it OP” . It nothing of the sort or both Soldiers and Celestial (and a number of other combinations) would be called OP. They removed them because the matches in a five player format dragged on too long with the bunker builds and given there no food or utility boosts and the amount of raw damage that can be put out limited certain armor types would just make fights go on forever.

In WvW not only is there foods and other consumables , but there significant population differences wherein one side can have a significant advantage at any given time and pump out all the damage needed to take down anyone. Added to that the matches last a week. There no rationale to “speeding up” a given fight as there is in PvP.

I should have specified, it was deemed too overpowered even during the existence of the bunker-dominant meta we had.

Its lack of release had nothing to do with defensive pacing issues but the damage : defense ratio being way off. If it had to do with defenses then they’d have removed soldier’s gear sooner, which they didn’t.

The removal of durable stats from sPvP has nothing to do with dire gear’s status as being too overpowered for competitive play considering it came so much later and the same (and superior) defenses existed and were not an issue prior.

It’s fair to say ANet would have removed these sets if they existed in sPvP when they removed the others, but arguing otherwise is just really smearing the truth.

Tongku.5326:

Thank god. So many years of zerker or GTFO is finally over, and hopefully for good.

In PvE and ZvZ where you had capped condition stacks and less applicability, yes.

But in small-scale WvW, conditions on a number of builds have been dominant since 2012.

And zerk gear has never been overly-dominant/best in WvW for any build except backline staff ele during the hammertrain meta. The rest is people playing it because they like it more. The notions of berserker gear being optimal were literally restricted only to PvE stack’n’clear speedrun groups prior to the condition changes.

Tongku.5326:

Eventine.8024:

Tongku.5326:

Thank god. So many years of zerker or GTFO is finally over, and hopefully for good.

The problem is, to be a zerker you need power, precision and ferocity (no space for vitality or toughness). To be a condi, you just need condi (and so expertise, if you want), and this give to you 2/1 other parameters to choose

That is false. There is a GOOD reason why viper with a bit of sinister or even rampager is the optimal build for all condi classes, not dire. And its a HUGE difference. Going full dire cuts your deeps in half or in some cases (build / class depending) you go as low as doing 1/3 of what you do otherwise. You do not go full viper either as you are going to hit the caps and waste stats, hence the mix.

Even when I go tanky I do not go full dire. You still need to keep at least some crit rate and some duration. Without duration all of your soft CC becomes ineffective and without crit + duration all your damage stacks drop off faster then you can apply them.

Running dire on necro for example, is equivalent to running PVT guard with lootstick + whatever. Situationally, depending on cleanses and resists, the necro deeps will be lower or higher then the lootstick guard which is more consistant.

The things I see that need a change are baseline stats across the board for everything. When A-net switched from havingstats on traits + gear to gear only, thats when the powercreep started because the trade offs disappeared. You can now be in full zerker and still be super tanky (ex: war, scrapper), albeit, only as long as your CDs last, likewise you can run full viper / sinister and still have many defenses (ex: staff thief, reaper, mes).

If they were to lower baseline stats across the board then people will have to have either heavy trade offs or go somewhat hybrid on their gear thus lowering overall effectiveness.

2 other tihngs I see. First too many cover condis from non condi players. This greatly reduces effectiveness of cleansing, resistance, -condi duration etc.

2nd, there is no reason to have more then 25 stacks of anything on any player, be it boon or condi, all this does is clog up the servers. Anyone with 20ish stacks of any damage condi + couple stacks of another + another will still drop just same as if they had 40ish or whatever stacks on them, only there would be less calculations for server to perform. Though I do understand there is an issue here with getting kill credits, you can graze someone with power hits and get kill credit whereas you have to do a lot more with condi to get it, so this may be tough to balance or accomplish.

You don’t play WvW or pay much attention to how stats work, do you?

Nobody runs DPS condi kits in WvW save maybe a very few number of roamers. Dire was deemed too overpowered for sPvP because it is mathematically completely and totally busted OP. TB’s just as bad.

The output damage isn’t even close to Soldier stats because skill-per-skill many condition abilities apply higher damage from conditions alone per cast than even berserker gear, and further, conditions ignore all armor and protection, while soldier gear does not. Prot and armor boosts are way more common than Resistance.

The justification of more durable condi builds was based on how conditions builds couldn’t deal burst damage. You’d be stupid to say they still can’t burst when I can take a necro of thief and right off the start of combat start ticking for 10k per second with almost no buildup time.

For kill credit you’re still wrong again; you have to do more than graze them. It’s based on max HP % and a timer. It doesn’t take much at all to get credit, but a random low-coefficient skill on a build not rocking lots of power/crit may miss out similarly as often.

This topic is like four years late to the party lol.

If you want to play a selfish class, you need to prove you’re an asset to the blob enough to justify your slot. Don’t expect anyone to “give you a chance;” far too many people think they’re way more useful than they are. The meta boon builds are faceroll easy and have tons of synergy and are therefore a safe bet for the most part.

If you’re actually really good, and the commander you’re nearby is actually good, they’ll recognize your contributions enough to keep you along for the ride.

I frontlined a crappy D/D power thief for like three straight years and usually got top-priority spots in commander/raid parties because diving a zerg solo and dropping the enemy commander just as the blob is about to engage begs for attention.

Half of the time, people on the professions are just free bags and rallies.

Follow along outside the squad, and over time if you’re not constantly dying or your KDA/utility in general is passable you’ll get the invites and get more and more invites.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Black Frog.9274:

I’ve always wanted to see a Guard + 3 P/P Thieves + Mesmer run around for small gang action. I think the general opinion of P/P thieves would change then.

In any given 5 man team, it’s more efficient to just has 3 Guards and 2 Mez, no need for Thieves. The main reason is, Thief has a very small range of options when it comes to group play — they take but never give. They are good with Guard and Mez, but are the Guard and Mez good with Thief? The benefit is not mutual.

For PvP sure but small-scale WvW this isn’t always true.

Thieves are cannibalistic but also gain immense synergy within themselves. The mesmer has enough stealth and defenses to keep up no problem. The guard can be an issue.

But that also depends on the guard. My old group used to run a mean hammer/GS CC-locking guard in WvW that would combo stealth from GS leap through BP’s smoke field for stealth to disengage as well during cooldowns, or one thief in shortbow in the other in D/P could blast smoke fields for everyone. The whole group could strike and disengage all together.

So while one thief may not contribute much to synergy in an sPvP encounter, its utility can be bounced around via multiple thieves and exacerbated in WvW small-scale; everyone just needs to play like thieves to benefit.

P/P generates so much damage as it is via Unload that there’s very little reason to push for BD. Especially since the bonus range is so good given the set’s desire to kite, while also making the thief effectively immune to chill/cripple/immob which otherwise easily kills P/P.

BD is usable for 1v1’s but in virtually every other environment UC is better.

The only issue with P/P is when you fight a reflect-heavy team. Though the shortbow buffs can probably help offset this given CG on shortbow is unblockable.

XenesisII.1540:

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

XenesisII.1540:

Welcome to WvW, where earning rewards was never easy or fair.

so then why don’t they fix it?

Welcome to WvW, where they don’t really fix stuff.

Was waiting for this comment, +1.

The new people here from PvE wanting the shiny glowing armor need to recognize something very important about WvW: The format is terribly maintained, has up until recently always been a net loss in terms of gold gained vs gold spent to win, and is absolutely and tremendously off-kilter in just about every way for what should be a respected game mode and major marketing opportunity for the company.

It’s at this point systematically failed; once people get demoralized out of it from the high requirements and terrible profession balance/elite spec gameplay, we’ll be back to bleeding out and maybe, hopefully, ANet will just pull the trigger on it entirely.

People aren’t playing it because it’s fun; most are playing it for the newest carrot on the stick. You can’t have a persistent environment succeed, especially a PvP one, when it’s simply not fun to play.

Sorry but everything about WvW is in fact worse than before. The DBL is probably the least-damaging thing they did to it of all the negatives in all honesty.

Guild Halls/ locking +5 behind thousands of gold made tons of invested small groups straight up stop on day 1. This was further exacerbated by banners and tacs.

The balance in WvW has never been worse, less diverse, or less fun than now.

Rewards in terms of gear and affordability really did not change that much.

It’s being upheld by the masses flocking to WvW for the AP and skins with the recent patch, but when most of these players realize it’ll take 16 straight weeks * 6 hours of fighting per day at peak performance to get the backpiece in the tickets alone, and probably close to a year of play to reach the 2k rank mark, the populations will fall and fall quickly.

Prior to HoT, only bottom-tier servers really suffered from population issues. Now, T1/T2 servers sometimes lack queues even with links to more servers. While T7 was a ghost town, I did transfer eventually and fondly recall being on T2 before HoT launched and having queues of over 100 people on most weekend nights.

Ranks aren’t even the bottleneck if I’m not mistaken. The reason it takes so long is the tickets which are capped weekly. Tons of people already have 2k+ WvW rank and will still need to wait a year to get the tickets regardless of how much or little they play.

FrostDraco.8306:

KrHome.1920:

FrostDraco.8306:

Marauder is trash on necro. I wish people would stop recommending this crap.

You lose power AND ferocity for precision, the only stat a single necro build doesn’t need. When you could take zerk/valk peices instead and have more power/fero/hp with less precision.

Marauder is suboptimal on necro. End of story.

Hell even WoodenPotatoes frost gun build was suboptimal because it was using rampager.

In PvE it’s trash (if “trash” means ~12% less damage than zerk).

In WvW roaming it’s the best power based stat we have.

In sPvP it’s still great even though demolisher and paladin might be better options in certain scenarios.

its 12% less damage on theif. It’s much more on necro.

For wvw roaming the best power stat is valk, hands down. Unless you are running dagger main hand, which i question why you would be running that in wvw anyway.

This isn’t true. A 12% damage loss on a thief means every other profession has a lower reduction since all of thief’s damage comes from multiplying damage values rather than raw stats.

The best options depends on weapons, traits, and sigils. Chill/Might CV reaper benefits a lot more from the precision versus DD reaper, up to 50%. A combination of all three is typically ideal for CV builds, for example due to the consistency it promotes, while the precision on a shroud-based DD build will be wasted stats, but the build less consistent.

Of course, this also depends are party/group/comp vs solo play, too. Someone generating constant Fury can negate a lot of the need for a substantial amount of precision.

Full marauder is largely a waste, but investing into 2/3 parts is quite viable and something I did on mine/optimized ones, which has around 26k hp, close to 3k power, and 210 crit damage at 50% crit chance exactly, upped to 100% from DP.

mistsim.2748:

I just looks like more spam now.

Since HoT, most of the requirements for skilled play have been thrown out the window.

Most of the skillgroup community has since left the game entirely because of it.

apharma.3741:

DeceiverX.8361:

apharma.3741:

The weird thing is they nerfed things like stupid high dodges on thief in PvP because it was silly but left it in for WvW yet other classes and trait get unilaterally buffed/nerfed to stupid levels like deathly chill and the recent warrior nerfs.

Skill splitting was good but they forgot that things that are stupidly strong in PvP are quite often just as or stronger in WvW.

Ah well, it’s supposed to be a balance patch at the same time, who knows, maybe it will fix a lot of stuff but I won’t hold my breath as many people return, play then leave after all the rubbish.

This is why I’ve been opposed to skill splitting from the getgo. Most needed-splits are done because of underlying poor design, not due to numbers imbalances. ANet’s profession team is already not doing a good job with limited splitting, and did a poor job with no splitting prior to it. Why should we expect better results with increased complexity and nuance? I never could understand this logic.

If sPvP stats were upped to WvW/PvE and amulets broken down into parts for granular stat selection, then we could just see universal game balancing and wouldn’t have this awkward splits where misunderstood modes would only get further neglected.

ANet’s refusal to fix their poor design decisions (I.E. reworks and attentive reverts) has been the single biggest factor in what has made this game’s PvP scene crumble as a whole.

Yeah a lot of people thought it wouldn’t be amazing but they have done good splits like the celestial avatar cool down being 15s in PvP/WvW but 10s in PvE. I think this is really the core issue, that they split between 3 game modes instead of splitting between PvE and PvP+WvW.

I don’t agree that making PvE and WvW granular stat choices would solve anything, yes the power of skills can be artificially regulated like in PvP now however gone is choice and freedom of builds for WvW. It would also cost a lot refunding all these stats people have crafted while tanking the GW2 economy.

Just to clarify, I didn’t say any PvE/WvW content should change; the sPvP amulet system is what should see increased granularity and bumped stats so that all three modes are on the same level without affecting gear outside of sPvP.

The thing is, are those splits really a good idea at the end of the day, or do they just make do with poor underlying design?

XenesisII.1540:

The wvw team does not handle profession balance for this game. Would you like them to sit around doing nothing for wvw or work on other gw2 projects other than wvw while you wait for balance to happen?

Just because there is a problem that we players agree is top of the stack in balance, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t work on other problems in the meantime, which wvw rewards were, a problem since day one.

In any case the only time we may ever see a major shift in balance will be when the expansions come out and new elite specs are being introduced, but I don’t expect traits to be revamped again nor do I expect the new direction of condition/boon combat balance to be reverted.

I am aware of this. I’m not criticizing the WvW team but how the game is being handled in general.

Profession balance defines the success of WvW regardless of what the WvW team does. Sorry, but any developments made by the WvW team are meaningless if people aren’t having fun fighting.

Stand The Wall.6987:

condis in gw1 didn’t do near as much damage.

I think condi damage should be supplementary.

It originally was.

Before they introduced the Condition damage stat on gear.

Conditions were originally meant to be small damage bumps mostly helping toughness/tanks field enough damage to make a difference in encounters while retaining their durability. It’s why condi ticks can’t crit and ignore armor, and why so few cleanses were in the game in years’ past; generally why also a number of professions had much stronger/weaker cleansing than others, typically, aside from the thief, proportional to their max health pools.

Thing is, ANet never revised how conditions are applied or the weapons/skills/traits/fields that apply and remove them afterwards.

Conditions have been broken in their dynamic for a long time.

They’ve been historically weak in PvE due to the condi cap, and have always been overbearing in WvW. Never so much in PvP because of the lack of stat/build/duration support, and the high-yield of cleanses often found on existing anti-power bunkers (D/D ele, medi guard, Defense warrior) utilizing cleanses for control condition removal as-is.

Until they normalize them, there will never be balance and people will massively complain one way or the other.

PvE will always have a speed-clear optimization meta, so it doesn’t matter how good the DPS is; either the build is or isn’t optimal, and that’s that. It’s only exacerbated with DPS recorders.

Lol wait they use the same tickets?

I have several hundred still I think. I didn’t like the mistforged skins and figured why not.

Might be worth logging in just to link them in map chat for luls.

Kitta.3657:

DeceiverX.8361:

Kitta.3657:

You guys don’t even realize that it will take you MONTHS and MONTHS to get these rewards because you’re limited on how many skirmishes tickets you can get per week and almost every reward is more expensive than you can earn in a week. Now that’s what you guys should be focusing on; THAT’S grind.

Locking gear and money behind PvE, rewards behind pips which could just be farmed by playing PvP non-stop in the earlier seasons, etc. Gating masteries and conent used in current LS behind other masteries.

ANet has been making their game slowly more and more grindy for a long time. If it’s taken you this long to realize it, I’m sorry to say that the train has since departed…

You missed the point completely

I don’t think I did. ANet knows what they did here.

It’s a short-term band-aid. In a few weeks everyone will lose motivation, and we’ll be back to the norm.

Then they can say they added powerful rewards to WvW and move on with their next PvE grind development project.

You make rewards come faster, then what? PvE players who grind it out leave and you’re still back to the crap that WvW is.

And WvW players then get the rewards and complain there’s nothing left to do for content, and that the rewards aren’t good enough long-term as some armor/skins are kinda meaningless when it comes to buying food etc.

The sooner it dies, the better IMHO. No point in playing into the sugar-coating.

Crowfall looks underfunded and is missing a lot of essential development talent to make it take off. Clunky and over-simplified are not a good mix.

All hope pretty much remains in C:U. For now, I’ll take to a real-life battlefield with SCA.

Kitta.3657:

You guys don’t even realize that it will take you MONTHS and MONTHS to get these rewards because you’re limited on how many skirmishes tickets you can get per week and almost every reward is more expensive than you can earn in a week. Now that’s what you guys should be focusing on; THAT’S grind.

Locking gear and money behind PvE, rewards behind pips which could just be farmed by playing PvP non-stop in the earlier seasons, etc. Gating masteries and content used in current LS behind other masteries.

ANet has been making their game slowly more and more grindy for a long time. If it’s taken you this long to realize it, I’m sorry to say that the train has since departed…

All that’s left of this playerbase is pretty much people who are okay with it at this point. And it’s largely people who refused to acknowledge the perspectives of others (often in the competitive formats) as being valid.

So let ‘em have their cake, I say. They’ll need to grind it like everyone else who hated PvE did for their stuff.

Yup.

ANet’s professions team refuses to take competitive play into consideration when designing new skills, traits, and multiplayer interactions.

This is just another facade to make the game/format look better than it is.

ANet in the past two years has made it very, very clear: Find another game if you don’t like PvE.

Or what I did: Another hobby entirely.

It’s the sad truth, but competitive play in this game has been rapidly declining since HoT. Many haven’t noticed it because they’ve done an amazing job covering it up.

Fixing the forum bug. See previous.

Mel.5821:

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Mel.5821:

I have been working several years as a Game Designer myself. If you are in the industry for a few years you can see the intention of things without them being explained to you.

oh so its intentional that players are repulsed by the amount of effort, as opposed to motivated or reinvigorated to pursue the carrot?

There are a lot of rewards to choose from, if you aim for the highest tier of reward from the get go you have noone to blame but yourself.
And “play as I want” is sadly an illusion, these games are doctored to give an illusion of choice, but there is no real choice.

Yeah, play as you like for a skin which has absolutely no bearing on anything else, with other options included elsewhere in other forms of content.

Totally not “play as you want.”

I call fat-cat you worked in game design. If you really were a champion of what’s healthy for the game you’d be opposed to having existing ranks count towards anything given the nature of how small-scale players and those not farmed via EoTM ktraining may have more hours in WvW despite being lower ranks.

The intention here is clear: Get WvW populations up. If ANet had any sense of integrity to fix the real problems with the PvP formats, it’d come from making the gameplay better, not just throwing cool pixels around that captivate the PvE folks enough to get them to try.

This is meant to be a reward for playing the game mode. ANet upheld that very clearly with the rank requirement.

If people are so salty, fine, here’s a solution.

Have the armor and legendary skins only work in WvW and LA.

Now there’s only incentive to get it for the people who play WvW a lot.

And then the populations will die again because the combat is actively keeping people away from it. Sound good?