Guild Wars 2

I thought you said it works fine while unplugged? Thermal throttling wouldn’t matter if it was plugged in or not; it would always happen while playing. That’s why I’m more inclined to believe it’s a power/battery setting more than anything.

53-57C isn’t terrifyingly hot. It’s hot, but not in the realm of what should require such drastic cuts. CPU usage is also a big factor in GW2’s performance. When you start hitting 60-70 or so is when you’ll probably start getting throttling issues as preventative measures.

I’m not sure what version of P4G I have. I have a G75VW from 2012, and never uninstalled the program. I’m going to assume you’re on a newer version, and the UI is probably a bit different. Either way, it should have similar options to adjust the control over throttling by the PC’s status of being plugged in or not.

EDIT: The 840m chip won’t be throttled by the GPU firmware until around 105C. You’ve got a long way to go for that to be inhibiting you. I’m almost positive this issue is stemming either from a weird power plan configuration, bad BIOS, or some faulty hardware/firmware.

The burst from D/D doesn’t really work in sPvP anyways with everyone being so tanky. You deal a whole ton of damage, but usually they’re still standing, and they just melt you while you’re revealed/engaged. With D/P, there’s a lot of skirmishing potential; interrupts, blinds, non-target stealth to disengage, etc.

Please not scepter. They’re all so ugly e.e

I’m really concerned with Trapper runes providing a heavy tank class with a lot of CC a ton of on-demand stealth and super speed.

Death blossom has such low power scaling that the only stat that would be effective would be dire.

But dire, especially P/D dire thief, is cheesy and un-fun.

Carrion would would with P/D because Shadow Strike has a very high power scaling ratio and also teleports you away and applies torment.

I’m absolutely fine with the trap if they give the thief the ability to cleanse conditions in better ways via more trait lines.

Sevans.4619:

MithranArkanere.8957:

One million dollars isn’t that much nowadays.

Maybe enough to pay for rent for 10 years or so.

Sheesh, tell me where you’re living so I can stay far, far away from that place.

With Social Security on the way out and an increased price in medical treatment for the elderly, it’s expected that the average American, retiring at age 65, will need about $1 million to live in comfortable retirement due to the expenses of being old in the not-too-distant future.

Better start saving.

It also makes no sense for condition builds to deal more damage to full tanks than full DPS, and the similar damage back to DPS classes while using inherently tankier builds or even as absurdly tanky builds like dire gear while also getting the full benefits of control condition duration or cleanses used on control conditions rather than DPS ticks, or scaling damage per attack dealt back to the caster via confusion with said extra durability, etc.

Here’s the thing about conditions: if you don’t cleanse them, they deal more damage than full DPS. Yes, they can be shut down immediately, but if they couldn’t, then there would be zero reason to use power builds in any PvP scenario.

A lot of condition generation is very unpredictable or difficult to escape from. I’d love to see you avoid every application of torment or permanently cleanse conditions coming from a scepter MH mesmer. I can load someone with 1m+ long bleeds from a necro by transferring out BiP with no tell. There are only a few skills in the game that deal direct damage that cannot be predicted or seen.

You act as though conditions are underpowered. They’re not. Again, the reasoning behind why they’re not played extensively is because they’re so powerful the only builds that find themselves viable are ones which run an extreme excess of condition cleanses. You can’t argue they’ll never be viable without buffing them on the sheer basis that an entire rework is needed of the condition system in general that doesn’t stem from buffing because they’re already too strong. There’s a reason the majority of small-scale/solo roam builds in WvW are condition builds. It’s because they’re inherently stronger and easier to play with fewer counter-play opportunities. This is especially apparent with dire/perplex, which doesn’t exist in sPvP because it’s just too strong to be even considered balanced.

If they removed +/- food and remove dire gear from the game, increased cleansing on the classes that do not have good cleansing as to let those classes not just die instantly to condi bombs, and rework every existing class and cleanse that exists by examining base health : condition cleanse access to all builds class-wide,, make all classes have the same access to the same conditions and the stack count under all condition builds, and re-tool these to make this allow condition users to create consistency in kill speed no matter what target they’re against by toughness values and class, MAYBE it will find itself balance.

The thing is, that conditions will never be balanced in PvP environments for as long as all of these are variable by class. But then, making them identical removes build/class diversity and then you’re mix-maxing my traits and utility use creating an environment where only one build on one class can be considered optimal.

As for condimancers having “zero role in WvW,” this is only true in blobbing. Otherwise, the terrorperplex necro is one of the strongest roaming/small scale builds currently in WvW due to its absolutely insane control potential, boon corruption, and ridiculous damage outputs while running full durability in dire with death shroud.

And for those who don’t have cleanses? Thief as a class only has cleansing from a trait in a trait line that does nothing and actually punishes skilled thieves. Otherwise it literally cannot cleanse more than one condition at a time at the cost of all of its initiative, it must pick if it wants to cleanse control of DoT conditions (it cannot do both), and cannot cleanse confusion, torment or vuln anywhere. Meanwhile this also suffers from the lowest HP pool in the game meaning the damage per tick means more to its max HP than every other class.

There is no reason for punishing classes or builds so heavily for not bringing a cleanse. That already exists extremely heavily in the game. Again, anyone who doesn’t bring a cleanse against a condi user pretty much straight up loses the fight, even with good evades, because the major attacks like Killshot, backstab, mind wrack, etc. are what win fights for power builds. The attacks from condition users don’t mean much individually and thus can’t be fully avoided while racking up huge DoT and control effects.

Maybe if an entire system rework was performed this idea could work. But then why bother going through that trouble to rework the system and not just balance the application/cleansing abilities themselves?

Your program version is likely different from mine, and there may be differences. Moving the sliders for CPU and GPU to 100% is where you should begin on the performance tab.
Notice the radio buttons that say “On Battery” and “Plugged In.” Make sure “Plugged In” is selected, and assure that the CPU and GPU sliders are moved to 100% or close to it – you can click the “On Battery” radio button to see what you have set for when you’re on battery, and copy those settings as well. Save your changes.

Now open the control panel from windows. Select battery options. Select the Power4Gear High Performance option as your active plan if you do not have an ASUS P4G key on your keyboard used to change battery plans or if it is not already active (depends on the model laptop, some do, some do not). When finished gaming, switch back to an appropriate plan via P4G to converse battery life if needed.

Hope that helps. There’s definitely some kind of weird setting configuration issue going on.

I disagree. Many of the strongest condition classes have ways which quite literally make some of the damage unavoidable. Additionally, the strongest conditions in the game are already difficult to remove as some classes/builds did not get updates to actually allow their removal (thief) when these were implemented.

The main reasoning behind why medi guards, shoutbow/hambow war and celestial eles are so popular is because of their condition cleansing. The reason behind why guards and eles are taken in WvW blobs is because of their AoE cleansing. Without cleansing being so high, strictly speaking, there is literally zero reason mathematically to play anything else but condi builds, because they actually deal more and more consistent damage in most PvP environments. This especially holds true for WvW.

Actually, the reasoning behind why engineers are playable in PvP has largely to do with their ability to flood conditions all at once or sustain them without changing much. The same with mesmers. Necros don’t see much condi play since their diversity is rather poor, and they lack access to the best conditions or very high stacking with shotrt durations/cooldowns.

If anything, your suggestion will only promote more hatred/direct countering towards condition builds. Usually anything I do in sPvP runs as many cleanses as physically possible because dealing with condition classes without maxing out just proves too difficult. I certainly know with the incoming trait changes I’m shifting to even more condition hatred. I’d honestly give up my heal to cleanse conditions on some classes.

Your suggestion would also require the removal of condi duration food (both + and -) from WvW. Otherwise it doesn’t end up resolving anything.

P4Gear Hybrid is actually a really good program, and possibly may have been limiting you based on configuration settings.

Check your power management settings as well. Your PC might be throttling your performance while plugged in/charging to make charging faster. Since you’ve removed P4G, this might be less configurable than desired, though. See if you can get it back and adjust it there.

JS, shouting on a thief makes very little sense. Unless it’s something like “Give me all your money!”

In which case it’s just trolly and rather insulting as an elite spec :\

BIGHARSHNESS.3510:

rainpool.7189:

Ranger’s longbow 2 git buffed so the cast time came from 4ish seconds to 2ish seconds. Maybe thats what you’re looking for.
And also, ele kills stuff faster than ranger with more AoE, and necros dont even come close, not sure why you would say necros have high damage o.0

My necro can trash mobs in seconds with d/d and wells. People can say what they want about necro dps, it’s always seemed to be pretty good IMO.

D/D necro DPS is mid-tier in PvE and on the high end in PvP and WvW.. A lot of necro QQ about the damage comes from condi staff players.

@OP: Sorry, but your Rapid Fire is not dealing 24k. Please, screenshot it. I’d love to know your build. Unless you’re Morellow + RaO/might-stacking with scholar runes, boosters, and getting real lucky on the crits, you’re simply not hitting for that much damage. At that point, however, anything will hit that high.

The mesmer will offer better burst damage by a very large margin, again, by build. You’re not going to kill a mob every 8s because shatter won’t be available, but the mesmer strictly has better damage coefficients on MW.

Also, D/D thief kills trash around 3x faster than any ranger build in existence, and eles kitted out properly melt bosses and balled trash mobs faster than anything else in the game.

All they changed on the ranger was Rapid Fire’s casting duration. It was compressed to deal the damage quicker, as before the change, it used to channel so slowly that the auto attack dealt better DPS. Otherwise, nothing has changed. It’s why the longbow is still considered a bad DPS weapon (MUCH lower than sword/axe). The damage itself on RF was not increased.

RabbitUp.8294:

DeceiverX.8361:

So… removing the over-effectiveness of parts of a given weapon which allows for unskilled players to get incredibly potent results for no other reason than playing a specific build with no pertinence to the gear/stats they have?

So, you made a list of reasons why turrets had to be addressed. None of them include “turrets were too hard to kill”.

Yet, this is what was changed. And in a manner that made turrets builds completely non-viable, which was the intention from the start. And that’s the problem here. Instead of trying to balance the skills, they gut them in a way no sane player would use them again.

You even said so yourself, turrets didn’t scale with the engineer’s stats. That was the best place to start balancing them.

I’m assuming you’re referring to someone else about half of what I posted, because I never said anything about what was needed to make turrets viable and fair. I also never posted anything about turrets not scaling with the engineer’s stats. What I did post, was the mentioning that the argument I quoted was flawed on the sheer principle that if something is overpowered for a particular reason, and largely for one particular reason, and it results in stale gameplay or too high of a skill floor, a nerf is justified on the pretense that it will change the game to be played for the better, and in the case of engineers or turret builds as a whole, this did not “kill” turret engineer viability, because the build was never “viable” in top-tier play to begin with, in which case all it was used for was blatantly winning against lower/medium skill brackets or builds not based around the current top-tier strategies/builds. The engineer still has plenty of viability as a class, and turrets are still usable. What they are no longer, is an unstoppable force that offers massive defenses and damage/control which can only be taken down by tankier specs and punish aggressive specs for no reason.

People who are crying about turrets being nerfed too hard fail to recognize that this build provided too much reward for basically no cost. Okay, so now turrets are maybe on the weaker side. Now the numbers for their defensive stats can be fiddled with better if it really comes down to it.

Turrets were never good. The players that ran them were never good through quantifiable means within the scope of playing the build because the skill floor was so high. Now that the build can be shut down, people are all in arms because it can be shut down by people who aren’t the best in the game. NEWSFLASH: The people which many mid-tier turret engineers were wiping were often more-skilled players than the engineers. Not MLG-levels of amazing (as then they wouldn’t have issues), but in many cases, players not on the top echelons of PvP playing turret builds were not particularly skilled and were being carried by something that was blatantly overpowered.

I do not see how it is unreasonable to kill a turret as a glass cannon in 2-3 seconds. Or how a utility skill can bodyblock for a period of time, or take target priority, etc., especially when that set of turrets could kill a glass cannon in 2-3 seconds. When tanks are dealing more damage, or at the very least the same amount of damage as full DPS to something in a PvP environment, there’s either a really kitten good reason why, or it’s because of an imbalance.

Kupper.8074:

Turrets needed to be changed but the manner they did it was sloppy. The equivalent would be to remove the knockbacks/stuns from warrior hammer or remove rapid fir from Rangers.

Making a whole build “useless” is just lazy, but per usual for Anet balance.

So… removing the over-effectiveness of parts of a given weapon which allows for unskilled players to get incredibly potent results for no other reason than playing a specific build with no pertinence to the gear/stats they have?

They removed an incredible amount of cheese from the class. If hammer warrior didn’t have absurd damage on the CC, people would have to use the set smarter or use a different alternate. LB ranger is already sub-par in sPvP and the best players use sword mainhand because it offers better DPS, control, durability, and engages. Longbow range is okay, but the rest of the set is underwhelming and strictly speaking, burst damage or sheer durability are what in in PvP.

So basically what you described was a fair and reasonable effort to balance the classes due to obvious issues with a particular class being blatantly overpowered in the low/mid tiers while not detracting from the upper echelons of skilled play. I.E., improving general health of the game and shaping newer players into more advanced format-style fights.

I’d prefer them just to see some minor cooldown reductions than a skill type. As then there are obvious choices as to which race picks which class. Some of those racial abilities are actually quite good. Adding types to them would be weird.

Lol. Aether and Azureflame? Seriously guys? That’s just insulting.

That’s a freaking PEARL STINGER.

As far as guard longbow, I’ll be kittened if they got it and thief ends up with rifle ._.

Condition build effectiveness is based upon variety and not stacking one to 25 or minutes long. Most of the duration-stack ones (burning/poison/immob) are intended to be used repeatedly for short durations.

Very few classes have the potential to get such strong cleansing. I’m assuming you’re referring to the thief, but the thief as a class only has one option for cleanses through a trait line that accounts for the class’s deficiencies. Otherwise, the class offers no burst cleansing but from Shadowstep, which is on a 60s cooldown and only offers the cleanse on return.

A similar thing with the guard if they’re alone. Also note that both of these classes have the lowest base health in the game. That means your ticks will deal proportionally more damage per unit of time. Without those cleanses, the class would have effectively a 100% loss chance against any given condition build, and already condition builds are widely considered as the best small-scale fighting builds in the game by a very, very large margin. It’s the sole reason why any builds for these classes without focusing on cleanses are ineffective and/or do not work at all in most cases.

Okay, so it’s obvious: we’re going to see way more play for condition builds after the Trait fix and HoT specializations. The thief already has issues with cleansing conditions, and frankly, and it basically dependent on SE to cleanse.

With HoT coming out and forcing us into three trait lines, this is basically going to put SA into an absolutely mandatory position on any given build between the need for good cleansing, a 50% damage reduction in stealth (even S/P and P/P can run Blinding Powder and benefit massively in close-call situations), and Rejuv. ANet has come out repeatedly saying they want to discourage passive play, but frankly, this line, especially in its post-trait-rework form, does so to a degree that’s just blatantly no fun and pulls away from build diversity due to its extreme power and border-line mandatory class features for a low health tier class, like condition cleansing.

ANet’s stance on removing passive play is absolute, and totally justified: they’re removing Infusion of Shadow for the purpose of preventing permanent stealth uptime. Awesome. I’m always for more active play. Unfortunately, though, with the gaps in the class’s base functionality, many players are going to feel obligated, if not required, to take points in a particular trait line to counteract these design issues.

I’ve been asking myself for a long time what can be done to bump thief viability up a bit in skirmishing in sPvP and promoting more diversity in its build options to allow for players to not feel/be totally obligated to use a trait line for particular matchups. I think I found a really solid answer that aligns itself with ANet’s design intentions of the class as a whole and what have been long-time desires of the community.

The changes? Simple. Remove Shadow’s Embrace as a trait from SA, move Last Refuge as an option in the new Adept SA tier, and replace it with a trait that cuts revealed durations applied to the thief by 2s in sPvP and 1s in PvE/WvW, while providing the thief class as a whole the ability to remove one damaging condition when entering the revealed status.

Now hold on there. I know you’re thinking either “OP” or “That’s awful.” And that’s exactly it; this change gives thieves universally more control over how to deal with DoT conditions, and the ability to do so quite well, and the ability to evaluate whether or not it will be worthwhile revealing themselves and possibly getting CC’ed and killed in the process. But simultaneously, this opens doors for counter-play by other classes; they can punish thieves hard by either baiting their reveal for a condi cleanse and locking them down during reveal, or can use range, blocks, or their own stealth abilities to prevent the thief from landing a hit to reveal while loading them with conditions. Of course, this then also requires opponents of thieves to better-track their enemy’s actions as to what they’ll do. Maybe they have SA and RoS/Rejuv, and DPS’ing/burning abilities to kill them while stealthed will ultimately be punishing. But of course, after the first fight, then the answer on how to deal with them is better known. This creates a dialog of back-and-forth between both thieves and non-thieves to counter each other through skilled play, rather than fights being largely decided on who has what build. The SA line then still gets solid cleansing due to its ability to gain stealth and subsequently get revealed more often, but now at a decision-point of utilities or initiative, and when to engage. I’d like to think this raises the skill cap of the class while buffing the minor builds a little bit.

Thoughts and feedback welcome! I’d like to garner some discussion on how a change like this could be applied to keep the class good at skirmishing while not just shelling out unnecessary amounts of damage, getting excess sustain, etc. without building fully into it.

While I hate stealth, it’s a necessary evil. Why? Because the class is one of the squishiest in the game, and the squishiest in the game if running a build that works. But why stealth? Because other classes have mechanics which promote passive play by the opponent. Torment, Confusion… all readily available to most other classes and builds, and the thief is physically incapable of dealing with builds that usually apply this in large quantities.

I’d be fine with losing stealth (as long as I can keep my backstab burst) if confusion and torment are thrown out the window. THOSE promote passive, do-nothing play more than anything, and offer way more of a low-risk/high-reward style of play when paired with dire gear due to its innate durability.

On a side note, any thief using SR and claiming to be dealing some kind of major burst damage is not building for real burst and just being arrogant and probably carried by fire/air procs.

That’s still asking for a lot for what is a problem caused by ANet’s changes and nothing else. They have already done select-stats/blank template items before when they removed Magic Find as a stat from armor. All items with magic find got menus to be turned into any stat combination that exists in the game that the user wanted. I see no reason for anyone to pay for ANet’s changes.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Verilan.2963:

oEnvy.3064:

SA significantly lowers the skill floor of thieves and it just annoys me that thieves will no longer be punished for taking it in spvp. I was fine with it in wvw as long as it stayed there, but thief is headed in a bad direction right now.

Agreed, but as I’ve learnt from experience, this is the wrong forum to think so – I’m getting the impression that a substantial amount of active users here on this subforum trait into SA, and are more happy to get buffs, than to be reasonable :/

You couldn’t be more wrong.

The defense for SA comes not from those who trait it, rather from those who wants to trait it. It is through reason that drives the conversation if the trait is even good enough to take. Unreasonably taking things away like a lot of suggestions here will leave the trait line unusable — and who will benefit from that?

No, the defense comes pretty much entirely from the trait line.

I trait into SA when I want to troll by being OP or need the ridiculous defense for doing things like soloing Mai Trin. I do nothing to change my style of play aside from not being stupid, and the trait line literally does all of the work.

RoS is overkill here. I could see this being made as 25% baseline to the class to compensate for the bonus in damage everyone will be getting in HoT, but quite frankly, I cannot argue any situation aside from a foe that does not attack back where not using SA is more beneficial. Even S/P and P/P primary builds focused on very limited stealth are going to get more out of this trait line than others.

That said, I’d also argue that it should be 25% baseline when not stealthed to promote stealth-less play and knowing when or when not to reveal. Hell, put Descent of Shadows as the minor, move CiS down, and put Infusion of Shadow back in as a GM. Now the line is cohesive for stealth-based players but not ridiculously tanky for being passive.

That this line will see its use in basically every build, stealth-heavy or not should raise a red flag.

With hard to catch traited.

It’s the sad reality that basically a tank build can still deal full damage (or close to it).

But that’s just P/D. It garners almost no respect from other people because it’s just incredibly face-roll easy with so much reward. Unfortunately, for many of those who use it, they’re still winning even while getting out-played, and it’s those types who won’t stop using it until it’s not so strong, and they’ll just jump to another bandwagon.

T raw.4658:

I personally can’t wait until stronghold unleashes the Hordes of PD condi thieves unto the PvP world.

Maybe we can finally get the build neutered.

Pretty much. Although this is going to be more or less a game-wide issue; condis are getting buffed immensely across the board to the point where I think they might out-damage berserker in PvE come the changes.

I think what saddens me the most is that we’re still forced into SA for a condi cleanse with all of these buffs to extremely powerful conditions, and not to mention new conditions. Mass cleansing is going to be essential.

Dire conditions is arguably the strongest and easiest to play build for WvW in the game. Dire P/D perplexity is so strong that it can win without using weapons (it’s been done).

I’m just waiting for blobs now to pretty much consist almost entirely of chronomancers. Currently I see little reason to play anything else. We’ll see what trait line goes away, though. Maybe (I hope) it’ll be reasonable. I’m mostly hoping so because the amount of confusion-stacking this brings to the table is absolutely absurd.

Then again, condi builds look like they’re about to be used in all formats come HoT/specialization reworks over everything else. A look-over on the classes has me feeling it’ll be Dire Wars 2 come the changes.

Stars.2179:

DeceiverX.8361:

Andred.1087:

Why is everybody under the impression that stats gained from traits are integral to builds? Gear already far outweighs traits in stat contribution, so I fail to see how this change will require anybody to get new armor.

Because for some people, it is an integral part of their build. Not everyone just runs berserker gear yet can maintain even better stats than meta-based berserker builds; mine being one of them. I use Valkyrie armor, which mathematically provides the best stat bonuses for my build. That said, it is not a standalone armor set; it’s border-line useless without a 6-deep investment into the precision line on top of a sigil of accuracy.

Without this, my ~4000 gold will be entirely wasted. There are other similar stat distributions which have the same problems.

I don’t think Valkyrie stat is mathematically the best stat bonus for your build. If anything it would be some combination of Berserker/Assassin/(to-be-released Ferocity primary-power-precision prefix) or Rampager/Sinister/(to-be-released Power primary-condi-precision) (once condi cap is increased)

By using Valkyrie, one purposefully decreases their damage output and replaces it with Vitality which is not necessary all PvE scenarios, which the said member would become a hindrance to the team. IIRC a full valkyrie set is only at about 70% of damage output as Berserker.

Back on topic, I hope with this trait-stat break, they need to increase the difference between Ascended and exotic – maybe about 15% to 20% stat difference like Exotic to rare. There is no gear treadmill here, Ascended has been out since the launch of the game to set the highest limit. (it was released two months after the launch – so close to it in relation to the game lifespan so one might as well consider it part of the original plan anyway)

For one, I don’t recall ever posting my build in this thread, so you cannot make claims as to what may or may not increase my damage. There’s also a reason I am one of, if not currently, the hardest-hitting thief in GW2.

I am not concentrating on PvE DPS, though. As a heavy WvW-based player, the burst potential of valkyrie equipment on a given hit can be superior to berserker by almost a factor of 20% when taking food buffs and stacks into consideration. As such, proper swapping and Sigil of Intelligence allows for key burst skills to always crit when desired, allowing for this massive power increase to still always land critical attacks, while keeping fury uptime doesn’t dramatically reduce DPS due to what can still be relatively high (40-50% before fury) crit chance from traits and stats from those traits alone. All the while, I’m still sporting around 5k more health, being able to pump out more damage while not needing to necessarily dodge, play defensive/stop attacking and reset.

This is particularly why a refund on ascended armor stat distribution is so desirable; for some builds, it’s totally destructive, and frankly, the omni infusions are the things that get hit the hardest here, for those can’t even be salvaged out if the user even feels it fair to need to re-make the armor.

Simply, if there is some basis for using existing resources to make the customer base happy, there is no reason not to. ANet has the full potential to follow through with either approach, as both have already been done before. Not doing so only hurts their clients, which is ultimately bad business and will hurt player morale and profits down the line.

As for increasing the stats on ascended items: No. Also, that is not “on topic.” If you want to discuss buffing ascended gear, take that to another thread. but first, some insight:

The investment to ascended gear to min-max stats is to do so for the infusions. There is already a huge buy-in investment with the 500 crafting, and already around a 12% increase in damage in comparison without considering infusion slots having omni infusions. GW2 is meant to be a game about keeping the competition stiff and not creating any kind of gear treadmill whatsoever. I like that I can still have a losing chance to people in exotics (who earned them for free nonetheless in what can be a few days) who play well enough. I’ve been on the wrong end of a treadmill before; frankly, this persistence by ANet to remove vertical progression is one of the main reasons I still play this game. Follow this, and you remove the skilled play. A lot of it was already lost when Ascended was first introduced. That’s pretty much what happens, and it’s not a good thing.

Please keep subsequent replies relevant to the initial discussion/feedback.

Andred.1087:

Why is everybody under the impression that stats gained from traits are integral to builds? Gear already far outweighs traits in stat contribution, so I fail to see how this change will require anybody to get new armor.

Because for some people, it is an integral part of their build. Not everyone just runs berserker gear yet can maintain even better stats than meta-based berserker builds; mine being one of them. I use Valkyrie armor, which mathematically provides the best stat bonuses for my build. That said, it is not a standalone armor set; it’s border-line useless without a 6-deep investment into the precision line on top of a sigil of accuracy.

Without this, my ~4000 gold will be entirely wasted. There are other similar stat distributions which have the same problems.

Maugetarr.6823:

DeceiverX.8361:

Shadow Arts is going to be so totally busted that you don’t even need the blind; there’s a built-in 50% damage reduction while stealthed from the minor 5 pt.

Also, if you want to play sustain-based D/X, play D/P. D/D is meant for damage. I’ll take my executioner + Hidden killer on signet stab but the sad fact is that a thief traited into SA can now get out-played and win/eat damage anyways because of 50% damage reduction while stealthed.

ANet’s not helping their case in regards to what will be future thief nerfs because of this ridiculous amount of sustain which requires skill to counterplay remotely well from stealth alone. Now it’ll be largely build-based.

Here’s a thought. Move RoS to the GM Major slot and roll it into CiS. Choosing between RoS/CiS and SRej feels more like an equal choice then.

Maybe. I’d also even go as far to say just cut the reduction in half (25%) and make that baseline due to the massive amount of damage buffs most professions are getting with the changes, making low-health pool classes extremely vulnerable from dying to hits even by tank specs.

It’s SR + RoS as a minor trait that’s making this obscene. The thief while in stealth becomes the tankiest class in the game with this change.

Vavume.8065:

lukejoe.1592:

what do you use this for? so far I have found one gap that I can avoid going around but besides that…not really seeing the point.

Goto wvw and try porting up cliffs and rooftops with it, there is 100+ spots that it is useful like this.

They patched WvW maps/IA recently and fixed the majority of them in WvW explicitly.

IA is a great blind tool against downed guards/warriors/rangers trying to knock you down. I’ll usually rush a stomp and immediately stop and use IA to blind the CC. It’s also got incredible kiting potential against multiple foes in PvE.

And of course, overall mobility.

Condi P/P perplexity will be terrifying in WvW.
Confusion AND torment on interrupts… AND more confusion on steal, with long-lasting blind potential? I’m dreading this happening.

VShare is also getting nerfed hard in this change. Leeching Venoms is getting a 1s ICD, meaning you can only optimize venoms by attacking only once per second…

Would just say make it 25% and make it baseline. Now there’s a reason for any power build to not be in SA. I think this trait alone is going to kill trait diversity for any builds with stealth access just because it’s too rewarding.

Shadow Arts is going to be so totally busted that you don’t even need the blind; there’s a built-in 50% damage reduction while stealthed from the minor 5 pt.

Also, if you want to play sustain-based D/X, play D/P. D/D is meant for damage. I’ll take my executioner + Hidden killer on signet stab but the sad fact is that a thief traited into SA can now get out-played and win/eat damage anyways because of 50% damage reduction while stealthed.

ANet’s not helping their case in regards to what will be future thief nerfs because of this ridiculous amount of sustain which requires skill to counterplay remotely well from stealth alone. Now it’ll be largely build-based.

Not really, no. Pretty much practice makes perfect, and to use the blind field for negation.

While the implementation details of the generic options are something that would need to be worked out for the sake of balancing, and I think it would be necessary to wait first on what the new traits/reworked traits are offering before we can conclude exactly which ways are reasonable for the allocation of these points, this thread is mostly here to raise awareness that the acquisition of ascended equipment, including trinkets, is a time-gated and very expensive (and thus time-consuming) process, and that these two options serve as very reasonable/existing media for resolving problems that may occur without consideration by the developers. Since we don’t know the final status on what’s really going to happen with the new traits (we only have initial concept ideas), there’s no telling what may or may not be balanced yet. All we can do is advise them on matters to make sure this rework doesn’t turn into a fiasco.

The professions are going to see absolutely monstrous increases in power when this next update rolls out, so I’m uncertain if total freedom in stat distribution is a good idea. Perhaps the second option can be expanded upon to allow the combinations as they are consisting of 14 points of investment (so 300/300/100); i.e., removing the traits from the current menu and just having users select stats that way. I say this because I fear for builds utilizing stat combinations not previously accessible which would make some builds wildly overpowered, causing ultimately future nerfs which will bottleneck sub-optimal builds out of viability/remove them altogether, which cuts diversity and counteracts this entire effort.

Either way, these are topics which need to be considered for the rework of traits into specializations.

If there became a dependency on other roles or builds, I’d get up and leave. The game marketing itself as a game without dependency on roles is specifically why I took any interest in the title whatsoever to begin with.

In it’s current state it’s one of the stronger classes in sPvP. Terrormancer and MM are absurdly strong builds, and DS burst is also incredibly strong in WvW.

They’re lackluster in PvE, but a class focused on control and conditions would be expected to be due to the way dungeons and world bosses are designed. We’ll also see what happens with the removal of the condi cap and poison being stackable. If anything, I’d expect to see condi sinister builds as providing the highest DPS by a far margin if the stack cap is removed.

IEximius.9204:

Make ascended armor base for some sort of legendary armor which can interchange their stats similar to how legendary weapons are. One, set.

While this is a possibility, and I did think about it, I decided not to add it to the options because I felt as though it would be making ascended armor do too much; recall that the inherent design is for it to yield almost unnoticeable/marginal gains for the sake of agony resistance. Doing this might make the armor for some players feel like a necessity or put extra stress on players to need to get a set of it, something which isn’t intended.

While I personally wouldn’t be opposed to it if it happened as an owner of ascended gear, I think it may be detrimental to the player base as a whole.

I’m just hoping this issue gets some attention and recognition; I blew huge account resources for ascended armor and omni infusions (Approx value ~4000 gold), and I know that others have as well. No kind of compensation is basically ANet coming out and stating they’re removing all Tyrian legendaries, even for players that already have them, and will not be replaced with any weapons.

Okay, so it’s great that we’re getting this update and that traits are merging away from stats, however I find it bothersome that our character stats are now going to be derived solely from our gear choices. This is really concerning for players who have made ascended armor, though, for now the desired stats on armor will not necessarily properly coincide with their desired build performance. Some of my characters will require entirely new sets of gear with this implementation due to the synergy (or lack thereof) of the stats gained from their trait lines. While this doesn’t totally break builds using exotic gear easily-obtained through dungeons, I would like to make a suggestion which attempts to resolve this issue by preventing the need for players to have to make entirely new sets of gear. With infusions alone running some people an upwards of 1800 gold, or time-gated behind laurels, I’d call it very unfair to change the stat distribution system so drastically and thus wasting many peoples’ efforts, time, and possibly real-life cash.

Consider the necessity of getting whole new sets of accessories as well, even for those without ascended weapons/armor

My suggestions for handling the issue:

OPTION 1:
- All soulbound exotic equipment and ascended equipment pieces get the blank template for stat choice, allowing for the player to select a stat similar to what was done upon the removal of the Magic Find stat. Accessories subsequently are updated into a blank ring which once activated allows for stat choice as well with the corresponding ring name, art, etc.

OPTION 2:
A character-based dialog menu which allows for the input of bonus character stats which would equate to those roughly obtained from the existing trait system, allowing for the selection of three primary stats and two secondary ones and to not adjust stats from gear.

Anyone else concerned with this new implementation without adjusting for existing armor and weapons?

It works. The problem is that it requires the thief to mug from behind thus losing all control over which side you’ll be hitting from once you press F1, and to deal more damage than 5/6/0/0/3, requires a one second wait time in stealth for First Strikes to go into effect – if they move a little, odds are you’re not hitting them from the back.

Still have a problem known as “Immobilized,” though. And I’m pretty sure this was a reference to the new Elementalist trait.

I refuse to consider forking over more money, even in the gem store, until communications as a whole improve. The hype at PAX South was generated way too early, and the minuscule details shared with us so far have been far from enough to warrant any interest in the upcoming expansion. Meanwhile, game-breaking issues such as traits, the NPE, PS problems, and really no major content tweaks or releases since the announcement have left many people concerned, disgusted, and frankly, un-supportive.

I understand that too much transparency kills hype/reactions to release content, but at the same time, speaking great promises of things to come and doing nothing to fix existing problems in the meanwhile is a rather insulting gesture.

Or just not have mastery rewards based upon existing completion metrics available only once per character/account? Then it doesn’t screw anyone over and makes the expansion put everyone on square one.

It’s been well-known for a while now that P/D power builds are functional because shadow strike has very high scaling and even sneak attack hits for substantial numbers. Obviously the mobility and steal potential from the set sets it over the edge, same deal with the condi variant.

drtoszi.2967:

“This isn’t a balance question. This is the fact the game was designed to work this way, and people no long need to be held back by needing x build to do content. People get to play what’s fun to them, and the speed-clear optimization meta is going to remain no matter what happens, no matter the game.”

Excuse me, but I’d like to point out that isn’t this exactly the argument?

You’re saying that “people no longer NEED to be held back by needing X build,” but it’s becoming increasingly common in-game that you do NEED to be Berserker or kicked.

It’s pretty much the reason why I’ve just given up on PVE and spend 90% of my time in PVP. At least there skilled people can make any build work and can lead to some surprises

For example, I met a hybrid (as in amulet wise) PP thief just a while ago that had a top spot on the kill board. It was mad fun since you usually never see that work, but they made it work!

This is a reference to my post so I’ll respond.

No. You don’t need berserker. Period. People want it for faster runs.

In many games, groups require a certain class of build x or y to complete the content in any way, shape, or form. There becomes zero ability to even complete the content without that dependency being fulfilled by someone of a certain build. This creates LFG problems and huge content dependencies. This is what GW2 deliberately tried to avoid doing in its development.

What you’re seeing now is an optimization strategy. In many trinity-based games, the same thing occurs; the whole healer/tank/DPS thing by class is also often a player-made creation where people get so used to clearing content this way it’s universally accepted as being necessary or “the way to do things.”

There is zero benefit to nerfing/removing berserker gear in regards to community toxicity. It just changes to what they’re arguing.

Anything to “tighten” the DPS curve compared to other sets just makes the other sets intrinsically better-performing with food.

There is no “fix” to the berserker “meta” involving any kind of stat curving, changing, or modifications.

Recall the ferocity change. That was intended to curb the difference. All it did was make dungeon parties even more stringent because overall DPS got lowered for all builds. Players using Assassin’s stats or using it as a hybrid into it got punished as well for no reason. It also nerfed berserker substantially for WvW.

Berserker stat gear isn’t OP. It’s one of the weakest in sPvP and aside from on certain classes performing certain roles, useless and arguably one of the worst combinations in WvW.

People complaining about this are complaining that DPS builds deal more damage than tank builds, and that people want to spend less time grinding, so they ask for DPS, since everyone has heals.

Having three stats in damage stats SHOULD yield by far the most DPS. The only thing that should come similar to this is sinister, but stack capping on conditions inhibits this. Otherwise, the set is functioning perfectly as intended and should not see power drops.

If you like playing tanks, I’m sorry, but you’re in the same position most DPS players are in games which require tanks. It sucks, being marginalized for someone else on a different build, doesn’kitten

Most groups do not require it. Optimized speed run groups will require it, but otherwise, it’s not necessary, and not dying is usually more essential than dealing some damage and downing instantly.

This isn’t a balance question. This is the fact the game was designed to work this way, and people no long need to be held back by needing x build to do content. People get to play what’s fun to them, and the speed-clear optimization meta is going to remain no matter what happens, no matter the game.

Tragic Positive.9356:

DeceiverX.8361:

Tragic Positive.9356:

…

No.

RF’s already crazy strong. It’s not being dodged because it’s the only worthwhile thing worth dodging but it’s being dodged because it will outright kill people if it isn’t. That also just breaks thieves/over-emphasizes the utility on Sic ‘Em. My RF would deal a bare minimum of 21k damage with this. That’s just totally absurd, sorry.

Are we speaking of WvW perspective?
Because if we are – I do agree. But once taken cPvP into account, you’ll see that you won’t 100-0 not even a full glass mesmer with a mere Rapid Fire. Not even under effects of Signet of the Wild.

Also… Which build using LB does include Sic’Em, again?

Anyways, my whole idea about rapid fire was to reduce all it’s cast times, cooldown and damage by 30% some time ago. The biggest danger of Rapid Fire is the sigil of Air + Fire application. Not really the damage itself.

Both. WvW this would be totally broken, and still extremely busted in sPvP seeing as it does quite literally nothing to reward skilled play.

My RF hits for around 10-13k in sPvP still, meaning some classes and builds are thus killable with a single auto-attack, and a air/fire RF.

The description of the revised skill stated it would gain 100% crit chance against targets under the revealed debuff. Sic ‘Em applies the revealed debuff to the target, thus giving the skill a 100% crit chance no matter what enemy is chosen, meanwhile still gaining the utility of stealth prevention on Sic ’Em so often used for shutting down thieves +1’ing fights or roaming in stealth. Comboing this skill would bolster damage very easily to around a 15-17k damage margin very easily, which 100-0’s thieves and a little extra. This way, the vuln stacking isn’t even needed.

The suggested change just creates arbitrary hard-counters to matchups which should already be won easily while not enhancing the skill ceiling of the ranger, and if anything, dropping it to be even lower with higher reward.

So no, this idea is honestly just not a good one to what is already a non-issue.

Taobella.6597:

i think WvW record highest hit on old system was around 30k ?

On a level 80 player wearing reasonable gear, yes.

Yes, with the old Assassin’s Signet and the pre-ferocity nerf, I do believe the all-time high was at around 28-29k.

Nothing now will come close to that number, however, as the Assassin’s Signet change alone pretty much cut this down by around a 9k damage margin. There have been some changes which have slightly offset this, but otherwise, this damage cannot be reached. Maximum theoretical hovers around 25k now with ideal circumstances. In most cases for practical concerns, higher-end stabs tend to sit at around 17k.

PvE? Well, it’s also a reputation thing. Anything ranged is bad for speed clears since it inhibits boon sharing/buff sharing. Rangers (mostly bandwagoners) are now obsessed with pewpew LB, thus making the class, generally speaking, less desirable.

Pet alternative. Sorry, but too much damage is lost when the pet gets nuked because it can’t avoid an AoE from a boss. Even pet evade on player evade isn’t proper since the pet can be the target of a major attack/skill or not walk out from an AOE circle.

WvW: Poor group utility. A reflected RF can kill your own members, and the class itself offers very little group support. Maybe we’ll see druids address this with CC and water fields. Otherwise the ranger adds nothing to the fight and as above, its pet is definitely dead.