Guild Wars 2

Tragic Positive.9356:

shadowpass.4236:

ANet can make a PvE version of the trait at 1% then. 2% in WvW and sPvP

Why not change the whole idea of that damage increase into:
“Your Rapid Fire ability now has 100% increased critical chance to targets with 10 or more vulnerability stacks or while under Revealed debuff (ICD 10).”
Rather than improving the already meh cheesy statistical damage output, I’d improve the burst we are able to pull out.

Also, with this change, only his team presence would go up (where he lacks a lot) and his prolonged and successful pressure duels (since you can’t apply lots of Vulnerability yourself, but every consecutive successful Rapid Fire would be the thing you are looking for).
Would also allow better build options since you might not exactly seek that much precision if the only thing you want is the burst.

And while people might think it is going to be too powerful, keep in mind that the current Rapid Fire is the only thing that is being blocked or dodged while fighting, and you should keep in mind that current builds already have roughly 70% crit chance while under effects of Fury.
So the damage of Rapid Fire would only go up around 30%, while trading it for Read the Wind – which basically is the only reason why Ranger is able to shoot from 1100+ range.
Also, if you wanted to pressure your target – you’d have to sacrifice your only reposition tool for that purpose.

No.

RF’s already crazy strong. It’s being dodged not 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.

For anything that’s not dependent on a target, sure.

I like my bird actives landing, though.

Justine.6351:

You people are terrible. They are not mistaken about ranger lb getting super range in comparison to other projectile attacks. Go test this yourself, it will make you feel stupid.

Couple other false statements by pro rangers. Yes you can aim your lb and hit things with no target. I spent just 2hrs in plains of Ashford the other night doing just that trying to develops a technique for PBS thieves out of SR. Its actually fairly easy attacking with lb and no target.

Yes all projectiles do just disappear after a certain range / they just won’t hit the target even if the animation looks like it should.

The longbow ranger is no different. The arrows DO disappear after around 1800.

Just like how mesmer GS continues until over 1400, thieve’s shortbow to around 1k, ele’s fire auto from staff until around 1400, LB war’s skills until around 1150, necro’s staff auto, lich form, and Death shroud autos, ice bow attacks, guard staff 2, engineer’s magnet pull going beyond 1200, and so on. This bonus range affects almost every single class in the game pretty massively. It’s only as noticeable on the rangers because the distance scales with projectile velocity/arc and height from attack. I frequently attack with my thief shortbow at > 2k range because of arrow fall-off when on a cliff despite the fact that the shortbow has only 900 range and cannot be traited longer.

This is not unique to rangers and unless you’re asking for everything except for pistol, rifle, and the ranger shortbow builds to get nerfed, is a nerf to all ranged builds. ANet on multiple occasions has formally stated that this is working as intended to give some ranged builds better functionality for taking advantage of high ground due to LOS counterplay opportunities available to all opponents. It simulates realism and combat strategy and is considered as a desired and intended functionality of these builds/weapons.

It’s not a bug, it affects all physics-based projectiles, such as mesmer GS, thief shortbow, and warrior longbow.

Ranger shortbow, pistols, and rifles do not get this extended range because their projectiles do not have physics behind them as they auto-hit. Actually, the mesmer GS and thief shortbow benefit the most of all of the weapons with the projectile quality because the attacks cannot be sidestepped, although the thief shortbow has distinctly less range on it by default, making the mesmer GS the best weapon in terms of damage reliability and range overall. Only the implementation of Read the Wind has made the longbow even remotely viable for PvP as the projectiles otherwise travel so slowly that they could be side-stepped just by moving left/right at anything greater than 900 range, making the ranger distinctly the worst class in range combat in skilled play without the trait.

Ariete.6509:

Ok i had to see it for myself, since i HADN’T EVEN NOTICE THE BUG.

I hardly ever put my pet on passive and he doesn’t die all that often, what i do frequently is to juggle the Attack/Return and that’s working albeit with a minor annoying delay on the return function.

You guys are total bullies. The man took the time to address the issue publicly, not on satellite means of communication, but in the official forums, and you guys keep the monkey costumes throwing feces at someone who gave you some respect.

When Anet doesn’t say anything, they get the feces. When they do come out straight asking for our understand, they get the feces. Just imagine how frustrating they work must be when you behave like spoiled brats.

Of course is gonna take time, i mean if he opened a thread for specifically this…

They may as well just have disabled the class in PvP, though. This bug quite honestly breaks the class so hard that in many cases of high-skill PvP it’s almost unusable or far weaker than normal it’s not worth playing. Anyone who uses aggressive mode in serious PvP will and should deserve to get out-played and lose their fights.

While I understand senseless complaining about nit-picky details is pointless and disrespectful, I’ve had to pretty much shelve my ranger for this period of time on the principle it cannot be played to the degree I need it to.

Looking forward to seeing the return of passive mode. Hope it comes back soon. PvP is pretty broken without it being available to use.

My best advice is to either keep a sword or shortbow available as a secondary weapon. While S/P is the easiest to level with, it doesn’t teach the player anything about the class aside from how to press 3 to deal damage and press 5 to avoid damage.

There’s nothing wrong with using D/D early on. It’s not optimal for speed/DPS, but it will teach you more about how to play better.

Regarding the secondary set choices:

S/X (it doesn’t matter the offhand) is a little more difficult but will let you kill things faster. Before combat you can use Infiltrator’s Strike to close distance/lay down infiltrator’s return (make sure you’re far away from the monster enough so that this skill does not land/deal damage), swap to D/D, and if you start getting low very quickly, swap back to S/X and cast Infiltrator’s Return to re-gain the distance, kite around, etc. You can opt to use S/D or S/P for evasion on skill #3 as well while maintaining in the fight and dealing damage. You can keep kiting in a similar way with S/D by removing your target to use IS in place such that you do not teleport, kite the monster(s), and again return back to that spot once you divert them elsewhere. Of course, there’s also Blinding Powder on S/P.

For the shortbow secondary, this is basically just an escape to buy time on your heal and kite around while dealing small amounts of damage or AOE’ing a larger group of monsters. The evade and reposition on Disabling Shot can get you out of a hairy situation if you have no dodges, and Infiltrator’s Arrow can be used to kite monsters or gain larger distances rapidly. This will take some swifter camera movements as well.

I recommend S/X against monsters with a lot of conditions as the return removes a condition, something you won’t have access to at all until your first trait, if you really feel the need to spec into Shadow Arts early on (I’d go for Deadly Arts for Mug as it’s a heal and does considerable damage), or once every 60 seconds from the Shadowstep utility.

Otherwise, there’s not much to it aside from practice and learning the ins and outs of the class/role.

Sebrent.3625:

@morbidillusion:
Aye, I never said that methods for gaining stealth did not have telegraphs. In fact, there are few ways to get stealth without some telegraph.

From my personal opinion, all abilities that affect your opponent(s) should have some telegraph as it generates additional chances for counterplay.

Now, if you believe adding a telegraph to any currently non-telegraphed abilities needs some compensation for them to remain viable, I’m all ears.

Currently, I don’t believe that stealth requiring a telegraph should dictate whether or not other abilities should/shouldn’t have telegraphs as stealth alone has its own benefit(s) … largely dependent on build, of course.

@Zero:
Can you please refer to our earlier discussion and choose the “mature” route. I feel that if you did you could contribute something meaningful.

I agree and disagree. The prerequisites for stealth are what have to be avoided, and the animation on the stab itself is rather long. This creates a dynamic where the enemy player still has a chance to avoid the big burst of incoming damage even if they were hit with the move that got the thief into stealth (referring to X/D). It is D/P and builds using stealth utilities or steal on stealth to engage that make this arguable. Frankly, I think the problem exists more with those abilities themselves rather than the damage source thereafter. Too much of a tell, and the offhand and mainhand daggers become effectively useless for stealth-based attacks and burst builds.

I agree however, in that all incoming damage sources should be avoidable in terms of knowing your foe. I will say it straight: I often greatly outplay other thieves while playing my signet stab build. On average I would say, conservatively, that I avoid around 70% of all incoming steals and steal effects (mug, daze, confusion) from enemy thieves through anticipation and knowing the class and how people play it. Mind you, I play D/D, so I’m either doing this with normal rolls or the very small evade frame on Death Blossom.

What I have a big problem with is fire and air sigils contributing so heavily to damage. In many instances of fighting these thieves (or really any class) which I out-play, I find myself losing a lot of fights on the basis that the one or two hits that I do allow myself to be hit by because of their low scaling/damage or anticipated follow-up bomb, I’ll end up eating an additional 3-5k damage from nowhere on a crit. One can predict being attacked. One can predict the chances of being critically hit. It becomes very difficult to predict the chances of being critically hit based on damage from what may not even be damage from a past attack and whether or not that hit, if a critical strike, will proc fire/air. All of a sudden being at 7k health and taking a 1-3k damage auto-attack doesn’t feel so safe. Being able to only calculate risk when at or near maximum health just seems like poor design. That kind of lack of tell is something which I think should be removed more than anything else.

As it was mentioned, perfect timing on the cast between stealth and the phase animation will net a thief permanent stealth uptime with Infusion of Shadow traited.

That said, it’s rather difficult to do against opponents who know how to deal with the class. It’s basically just a troll move.

Hyper-burst Thief/Tank Guard is hilarious when done right. Guard can engage and use immunities/blocks/healing/hard CC the targets to soak up a ton of damage and force evades while supporting the thief with protection/the hard CC/healing/might stacks for the thief to engage and pretty much one-shot each target as necessary.

Thief/thief I’d argue is the strongest overall as the class can combo off of smoke fields, SR, etc. dropped by your ally, and both can bring a lot of disruption, damage, and reset potential. You need to have people build around it a little bit, though.

Thieves have magic? Since when?

You just get a few shadowy sprites while activating some abilities. The shortbow is not at all close to what you’re looking at since the thief shortbow has no viable or even reasonably-decent build using it as a main weapon, since it offers overall fairly low damage and is entirely designed as a utility weapon.

There really isn’t one out there. I’d say just go ranger for the archery, or ele for the magic. Guards and wars don’t really fit the bill with the armor, but warriors do shoot fireballs from the bow, making it the closest I guess?

The reason you’re lagging in huge player environments is because the game only runs on one core. Otherwise, the game is factually the best-optimized MMO on the market (that’s competitive profit/user-base-wise).

Of course, multi-threading a program of such scale is very difficult to do.

Even in 100v100 I still manage around 25 fps on high/ultra settings on a rig I built almost four years ago.

Running a million CPU cores each with low clock speeds is probably your problem.

You can’t join T1 even as a new player. It’s full even to new accounts.

Massive issues currently on Dragonbrand. Anywhere near more than around five people I start experiencing around a 2-7 second delay on skills, dodges, and weapon swaps, with a lot of allied and enemy rubber-banding/teleporting. I’m getting the animations for being in stealth and getting attacked by target-only abilities because in reality I’m already without the buff server-side when my client is just beginning to display it.

The only way to fix both is to clone the color model used by EoTM such that all servers are placed in one huge map/fight pit based by color based upon a variety of statistics like population density at certain time periods, individual server contribution/score, number of players engaged in WvW, etc.

Sad fact is that I doubt they’d do this. It would require an immense hardware investment for a mode which ANet pretty much has stated as being unworthy of fixing problems for, despite it being one of the biggest attractions to GW2.

sPvP is extremely far from balanced/technical. Play a meta build and you basically win any other fight unless it’s another meta build, in which case it usually boils down solely on match-up. The lack of diversity is so huge that it kills a lot of appeal.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Maguuma is the #1 NA skill server. In other servers, if a player is good, he is considered to have #MagSwag.

TC is a great server to roleplay and WvW in. You’ll find smaller havoc teams and large zergs. The best of both worlds.

If you’re a really good player, BG is a place to aim. They’ll even pay for your transfer fees should you prove to be one of the bestest. They’re known as the rich server, with a War Chest that surpasses imagination.

JQ runs a lot of open field siege tactics. They have large numbers of coordinated zergs that take the frontlines, while Ballista and AC cover their flanks.

Not sure how DB, SoS, and FA are these days.

From what I’ve seen, there is absolutely no skill correlation to players on any server whatsoever. I’ve seen no big plays from the Mag roamers (actually the small groups of 2-3 I’ve bumped into so far have been largely poor players), and frankly every single map available has the outnumbered buff almost all the time during NA hours; their blobs and overall number of players are normally around six or seven times the size of ours.

All T1 servers are full/not allowed to even join the game on them with new accounts.

I’m looking to transfer away from Dragonbrand. The NA coverage is so poor that I found more enjoyment in T8 where I was transferred from, and I’m burning out quickly on the entire reason I play GW2. That said, I refuse to go to SBI/Mag because they’re both disgusting.

caveman.5840:

who cares about server identity

i am sick of a empty wvw map and castles with no one defending

make wvw faction based and be proud of your faction identity

if your guild is good u will have even more chances to recruit people because servers wont be getting in the way

and the only reason EoTM is a brain less train is because u are not rewarded for doing anything else besides running in a train
they are short matches- u don’t up grade anything defend anything just collect points

just because something is a mega server does not mean it will end up like EoTM
EoTM is like this because of the rules in place
and how they reward the players for playing in EoTM

Exactly. IF they removed the exp rewards from EoTM, nobody would play it. It’s also not taken seriously as a map currently because the map itself is laid out in such a terrible way.

If server pride really existed, anyways, guilds in T1/T2 wouldn’t be bought out and transferring around to the winning enemy servers on an almost weekly basis. Guild pride still exists, and it is in fact your guild’s name and banners that still get displayed to the enemy. Your server still exists and still has an individual rank. This time you just have allies to spice the game mode up and keep it moving at all hours of the day for all server populations. The servers being isolated entities in WvW is totally arbitrary.

And if two resentful guilds end up on the same side? Suck it up and deal with it. I was told that exact phrase when I was six in terms of working with people I didn’t like. And y’know what? When you move past your ego, you can get a lot done. If guilds aren’t then going to cooperate because of their egos, let them. Both will drop in rank, and likely garner a lot of disrespect from the rest of the players on their servers or in their communities.

They have formally announced lag spike issues and that they were considering reducing player counts to some of the T1 servers. If that actually happened, I can’t confirm.

Fel.2319:

DeceiverX.8361:

Looks like mag took the keep but wants to keep fighting. Where’s SBI if you want to fight so bad? Or is hiding in nearby towers while mag fights for you while not capping them what you consider fighting fair?

Give me a break.

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/MagSBIGangup2_zpswswdzi1l.jpg

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw092_zpspdwddrrw.jpg

DeceiverX.8361:

fighting fair?

DeceiverX.8361:

fair?

LOL

Oh, hi btw

~That Zerk Ele that was jumping on you

Stupid mist form e.e

Honestly, would prefer WvW to see a color split similar to EoTM where individual servers rotate colors, and the colors fight. Data like coverage, peak population, objectives taken by guild/origin server, etc., is very easy to acquire with some database knowledge (which I assume ANet has for obvious reasons), and can be used to formulate team compositions on a weekly basis. Server ranks would then still be scored by individual server performance (basically add another piece of data to objective event instances, or query cleverly), also keeping the tiers in place with few issues. Your server-mates are still your only true, permanent allies, and this helps solve issues with coverage, guild politics (guilds leaving for other servers/being bought out and creating power vacuums, etc., etc. Server pride is great and all when you’re winning, but when you have your back against the wall or are wanting to WvW in a low-tier/low-pop server, it’s pretty crappy and really detracts from the experience to have no allies fighting alongside you.

The forseeable issue is the lack of tech to handle so many people, but I think it’d be manageable if they kept both the alpine and desert BL’s available simultaneously as options and upper the player count just a little. WvW attracts a lot of people to GW2. Unfortunately I think the lack of support for it causes a lot of people to also leave.

I know this is a pretty crazy idea guys.

But why not just remove both foods from the game. Condition duration food does nothing for dungeons because the stack cap is going to be reached, anyways, so it might as well be damage, and the border-line requirement of +40/-40 to offset it creates the same effect as if neither party had the food. Now condi users can just take other foods to augment their builds better in more interesting ways, and power builds, tanks, and so on can do the same in different ways. It makes no sense to deadlock people into taking these foods/rule out so many other because of blatant superiority.

I don’t think SBI cares about winning as much as a joint effort to keep us down since we’re ahead of both servers by such a large amount in terms of tier score to catch up.

Looks like mag took the keep but wants to keep fighting. Where’s SBI if you want to fight so bad? Or is hiding in nearby towers while mag fights for you while not capping them what you consider fighting fair?

Give me a break.

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/MagSBIGangup2_zpswswdzi1l.jpg

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw092_zpspdwddrrw.jpg

azyume.6321:

Zzz double teaming? Really want to go with that?

SBI goes to where fight is. Simple as that and if some commander decide to go for retaliation for DB spending so much time on SBI border that’s forbidden?

You should learn to read a chart first before starting with crappy non sense conspiracy.
http://www.gw2score.com/server/Dragonbrand

LOL.

I’ve yet to see SBI fight us if not severely outnumbering us. Let alone fight mag.

Explain to me why the map looks like this, then, with SBI pushing our towers but dare not engaging on the hole-filled keep with mag sitting there camping? This sceen was taken five mins ago, and has been happening all day long. The second map a few hours ago.

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/MagSBIGangup_zpsmylwv584.jpg

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw090_zpstg7pwfgp.jpg

(Earlier:)
http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad295/NooFaiL/Random%20Stuff/gw088_zpshjdug13a.jpg

For those not in this, Mag is red, DB green, SBI blue.

If you seriously think this isn’t a cooperative effort to shut down DB you’re absolutely delusional or have no idea what’s going on with your server.

Like I said. I’ve lost all respect for these servers.

FrownyClown.8402:

Rhialto.8423:

Arius.7031:

t3 is terrible. Having fought Mag, DB, and SBI recently, each server only has a few gems and a sea of rubbish. PYRO is okay, VR is okay, every other guild on Mag is average to trash. Weak pugs. Solid roamers. SBI has great zerg pugs, terrible otherwise, no serious guilds. DB is just all around pretty terrible in just about every conceivable way.

Tier 3 is not the fights tier at this moment. I’d say of all tiers I’ve been in, it’s among the worst for fights.

Mag, you cannot makes a fights tier when you have so few fights guilds. You can’t do it. You’ll need to get way more fights guilds before we’re anywhere near making t3 a fights tier. Until then, it’s one of the most abominable PPT tiers around, with Mag’s scrub ppters (sfd/fail) fighting db’s ppters (everyone in SEA) with some poor 3rd server caught in the middle of the ajs.

Mag is definitely taking this matchup so far, no doubt about that. But you’re off the mark when you talk about their roamers… they are terrible. I have run into exactly two that were really good in the past week, a mesmer and guard duo who ran the train on groups double their size. The rest melt in even matchups, lose favorable matchups, and run away if you catch them 1v1.

Mag has blobs, SBI and DB don’t have comparable blobs when Mag’s blobs are blobbing. Not saying Mag isn’t earning their win bc that’s the WvW meta but that’s it.

what? DB never fights us unless they outblob us. SBI at least fights.

Hard to fight when perpetually out-blobbed by a factor of at least three whenever I log in during NA afternoon/evenings. Sorry, this is not a fight tier. Fight tiers need have respect for their foes and respect for the game mode itself.

I lost all respect for Mag and SBI in WvW today. 6x numbers exclusively attacking only our territories; SBI’s EBG third untouched, BL’s untouched, map queue spawn camping DB in EBG and SBI + mag attacking our BL and only what we had capped.

I honestly hope either DB drops down a few tiers or Mag stays in T2 to avoid this kind of play. I’m cool getting steamrolled in an honest three-way fight by a server that dropped down. This is just disgusting.

Engineers are an extremely strong class and is why they’re currently valued as the best or tied for best roaming class in the game. The thief is arguably worse in its small-scale/1v1 fighting against a variety of common builds which the engineer can handle.

alccode.1297:

A lot of people already addressed the early criticism by oEnvy and shadowpass but I must say that saying things like “SA carried you” and “lucky last refuge” is pretty nonsensical. It’s not like they’re some cheap external factor. “Being carried” applies when other players carry you. You can’t be carried by skills you use. You just win using the skills you have.

“Lucky last refuge” is especially ludicrous. Last refuge is be definition meant to be used as a L-A-S-T R-E-F-U-GE. If you can’t pop it when in trouble and need some help, how are you “supposed” to use it that isn’t scrubby?

The bottom line here I think is that there is a difference between suggesting ways in which to improve gameplay (though in this case it wasn’t asked for), versus flat out knocking someone for not being “perfect”. As others pointed out, the critics themselves aren’t flawless in their own videos.

For me, I found it especially impressive how OP came so close to dying several times, but pulled fast ones just in time to get back into the fight. That last refuge where he hid in the corner was pretty impressive. Very good stuff. The results speak for themselves. Much more impressive than a “good” player who wins without being in danger, because that just shows his opponents were particularly bad.

Do you know what LR is or does? There is no activation process. It activates automatically for you when you reach a certain health threshold. You’re confusing this with Shadow Refuge.

OP’s video is decent. SA genuinely did carry most of these fights. Not a discredit to the OP, just saying anyone not using the trait line wouldn’t have done nearly as well with that kind of play. There were some ups and downs in the video. My gripes are further with the use of P/D, though. Obviously overpowered set is obviously overpowered.

Had something like 2:02 happen two days ago with an enemy of mine. Took him to like 1/3 with a CC and he just LR’ed right off the side of the cliff behind him

For sPvP, trickery is almost mandatory for the initiative gains and utility it offers while not using stealth; sPvP makes using stealth detrimental more than helpful most of the time. Obviously if you’re just playing for kill score, though, it would be more beneficial to use SA. This only really applies in the map with no objectives, though.

Otherwise it’s really just practice and learning what the other professions often respond to your damage with, as well as the individual players themselves; learning to adapt to your opponent’s weaknesses on a personal level is huge when playing as a thief.

For WvW, 2/6/6/0/0 D/P Shadow Arts is one of the easiest builds you can play, hate to say. It’s pretty much just practicing.

Deadly Arts adept should be Mug over sundering. Mug has a very high damage ratio and will net you better DPS and burst damage.

Revealed Training is bad without mug as it won’t do anything for your stabs and only really applies towards using HS/auto-attacks for a little extra which IMHO is pointless. I’d take one point out from DA and move it to Trickery for the 15 initiative so that it allows for the First Strikes trait to go into effect and gives you more initiative overall for using abilities.

D/P plays poorly without Shadow Arts/Infusion of Shadow due to its initiative cost.
I think traited quickness is useless unless you’re PvE and are just spamming 1 to kill people. It will also pop the ICD on the sigil of rage making the mixture useless. You’re better off with Signet Use or practiced tolerance for better durability. Sigil of Frailty is pretty much junk; force or even accuracy would be better. Fire/Air is the undisputed best possible combination, but I think it’s overpowered and cheesy and personally don’t use them. That said, it is the strongest.

On a signet build, you need Assassin’s Signet. Most people use D/D as well as it offers way better burst damage because CnD hits hard and applies 3 vuln.

I’d drop BP for Shadow Refuge or just go into 3 signets for Assassin’s signet. Basilisk Venom is a better elite if you’re doing small-scale, and can also be substantially better for periph in blobs. DS is only really useful when you see a ranger (or a few) coming at you and can swap it in before you go into combat, or are trying to tag/cripple/reflect in the center of a blob if walled in (like in SMC).

Signet Stab/crit builds are usually the most functional on D/D, though, as it offers by a very large margin superior damage, thus allowing for your target to have a more likely chance of being dead after striking initially. Otherwise you just blow utilities for no good reason and leave yourself vulnerable while low on initiative from consuming 8/9 from BP + HS.

MrForz.1953:

The term “cheese”, came from the pronunciation of a shortened version of “cheater” (if I’m not mistaken) in Korean, and it described an unbeatable all-in strategy the Terran race in Starcraft had access to, producing marines very early and sending them, along with all your workers, to the enemy base. The “cheese” then became the term for all the early-game all-in strategies on Starcraft 2, very hard to defeat if you didn’t scout it (hello proxy gateway), and easy to adapt to if you see it coming.

To go for a cheese is to go for an all-in tactic, if you don’t end the fight very soon, you’ll lose on the long run no matter what. But the cheese is, in comparison to the classic all-in, quite often nearly unbeatable, and fairly easy to execute.

I figured it was derived from the English expression “cheesy” which describes something as cheap and inferior as towards the means of someone else’s victory by using a build to carry inferior skill with cheap tactics.

Furious Maintenance Oil only sees better efficiency against very squishy targets; Sharpening Stones will end up helping out more on low power (under 3k) or builds not running Valkyrie gear.

Spamming unload with actual trait investment will do fairly well in terms of DPS numbers. Only D/D and S/P can beat it as long as you don’t waste your time on ricochet or trait into SA :P

Thaddeus.4891:

Windsagio.1340:

In the case of instanced content though; it sets an expectation, everything else (fractals, aether path) gets fairly commonly mentioned as ‘not rewarding enough’.

Instanced content or not have nothing to do with it. It’s a time vs reward vs challenge (or difficulty balance.

Dungeon is easier than Fractal 50 so Fractal should have a better reward/hour.
Silverwaste is easier than Dungeon so Dungeon should have a better reward/hour.
etc, etc

CoF path 1 is twice as fast as most other dungeon, so it should reward half as much. TA Aetherpath is 3-4 times longer than normal dungeon so it should reward 3-4 times more.

And if on average, one rewards more money proportionally to the other, the hardcore players will all do that one still, and the casual players will just stick to the one that takes the least time overall to fit their schedules.

Some dungeons also take some parties a LONG time, and some groups can do that same content in minutes. Now imagine the negative impact of further-awarding the “10k+AP zerker experienced only” parties which can navigate Aetherpath in less than an hour. It becomes exploited and ultimately hurts the game further.

Just creating new content creates an influx of interest at least temporarily. Giving the token rewards to some newer dungeons more value (cool new runes, skins, random loot bags, etc.) can create more value for that content for an extended period of time, especially id it doesn’t conflict with the interests of the older dungeons.

People are ultimately going to optimize their play time in the end. There’s no reason not to create more content, even if it is less-often played.

Many.8419:

To be honest I don’t feel like my character accomplished anything in this game, lorewise. It is said over and over again by npcs “you’re the boss” “hooray the commander” etc but after replaying the content I felt more like a sidekick of Jory and others complimenting everything I did like I should feel rewarded. Yeah, few lines of dialog is not a reward a hero dreams about.

It feels like becoming a member of White Mantle in GW1. A ceremony, fat guy telling me I am cool but afterall it left 0 feelings and is totally underplayed.

For me there should be no NPC party running aroung our character. We are the heroes. Why should I care about teenage lovestory or an asura progeny trying to be rebel. Those characters drive the focus from my character and it feels like the game is about them. Not even dragons.

I like DE1.0 more because they are not running around me. They have story behind them, they have their own troubles and they don’t try to be my sidekicks. With DE2.0 it feels like gathering of homeless wannabe heroes with no real reason to do so.

Really agree with this.

On the subject of characters, this is coming from someone who didn’t play S1 because I really didn’t care/missed out on some of the story episodes throughout it.

I actually think Braham is the most tolerable and realistic NPC in the group. Kasjory is sickening and overdone, Taimi is an annoying runt (like basically every other asura in the game) who only has relevance for her genetics/inherent genius and luck with her ley line studies having any relevance in the world (otherwise a useless NPC who isn’t even particularly interesting or comedic), and Rox is just too out there. The anime eyes I think are largely to blame. I can understand a softie-char like Tybalt being an outcast to the charr (like Tybalt was with his comrades), but the whole weak/cutesey trope thing just doesn’t work. There’s a difference between being kind and being cute and immature.

Braham at least makes sense in terms of his role and subsequent writing. He’s a guy raised by a bunch of party-loving brutes who esteem themselves on the hunt and synergy with animal spirits, not to mention the (deceased) single-parent and lack of moderation/known level-headed-ness Eir brings/mother figure. Nobody should expect much in terms of social common sense and intellect from him, and that’s portrayed well. With his mother – there should be no connection – that’s the point. She made an active decision to not help raise her son. She would have a total disconnect from him and vice versa; that ‘love’ and feeling of regret is obligatory mostly because of the death of the father. That entire relationship should be of [chat filter prevention] awkward anger and regret filling the void between them. What Braham gives Taimi is the relationship of nurturing/pride he never really had with his mom in attempts to fill it, and honestly, completes him much more as a character than anyone else in the group. He’s also seen some progression in responsibility and holding back on the “smash-first” attitude over time, further portraying character growth and development.

Just my two cents.

What they should do?

Leave it as it is, remove SE, buff innate condition cleansing.

Now the SA rejuv/permastealth bads can still get killed by misplaying and the entire class and other builds can see basic functionality in sPvP and solo tactics without depending on SA/SE/forcing those who do for SE to play with this broken trait.

Wetpaw.3487:

I just power leveled a Thief 1-80 under a few minutes this week to get a better idea how this profession works in WvW.

It’s a pretty easy profession to play well, and won almost every encounter I came across except a really good mesmer that had me running…I ran, healed, and came back for the kill. The mesmer would have had me, cd’s won that fight is all.

I played as a d/p-d/d, and d/p-sb build (0,6,6,2,0 zerk/valk), unless my target was built for support it was a pretty easy mark. Support just used gap closers and boons to run away past my cd’s. The Thief has so many good offensive power, utility, and escape in these traits makes me jelly.

With that said I wish my main (Ranger) had half of this survivability as a non zerg play profession outside of some tank cond build. I wouldn’t complain if Sic’em got changed to a AOE flare that reveals like the WoW Hunter got to help counter.

You’re getting these results by investing 6 points in Shadow Arts.

Try playing with zero points invested and see how it goes; your results will be the exact opposite.

The most powerful traits the thief has access to are located within the SA line. The sad fact is that most of these traits are just covering deficiencies within the class itself (and are inherently overly-strong to make their investment feel worthwhile/not overpowered). That said, these traits themselves are just blatantly overpowered and give the class more than what most other classes can get access to. The dependency on SA to make the class largely functional, however, inhibits a lot of potential nerfs but subsequently inhibits buffs to the class overall because then any build speccing into SA would just be an unstoppable monster (and it’s already pretty close in WvW).

With sPvP, SA is pointless because you can’t cap points in stealth and the damage ratios are toned too heavily down and defenses too high to quickly +1 and end fights. Resetting also means very little when your opponent can force you off point/cap while your score dwindles and you’re left off trying to repeatedly reset. Might as well just play any other class and stand fighting or not build SA and +1 faster.

Much like my opinions on Fire/Air sigils dealing disproportionately high amounts of damage relative to the complaints about burst/berserker specs and not berserker builds dealing too much damage by design, I believe the complaints or comments about the thief being overpowered or having too much utility/reset potential is not with the class itself but a cheesy optional mechanic; Shadow Arts.

Doon.2364:

Why do so many players call Bull’s charge , Bull’s Rush?

D&D/Pathfinder habits, likely, as it’s a maneuver used to charge and force an enemy backwards.

Thothkepara.2539:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Thieves can’t 1 shot you from stealth. Mesmers can. I have a bigger problem with that.

I main a shatter Mes, I’m no pro but I can say without a doubt that only the most glassy, upleveled and new Ele, Thief or another Mes might be downed in what you call a “one shot.” To be precise we have to pop 3-4 CDs to do that with dead-on timing, not just one lazy button press like a Thief.

There is no comparison.

This is just insulting.

“One lazy button?” Seriously?

A thief with a real burst build not 1-shotting uplevels has to blow three to six cooldowns and their weapon swap to deal such damage. I know I personally go through eight button presses, all of my utilities, elite, class mechanic, weapon swapping, and half of my global resource pool before considering the reposition on CnD -> stab when using my proper stab damage build in what is normally under a second, while still needing to find the rear of the target and execute as necessary.

There is no real alternative for damage. Night/Impact can deal more burst damage on a stab within the frame of Basilisk Venom, but that’s only applicable to a signet burst build like mine assuming it’s also night time, and the opponent has no aegis/stability/immunities/blocks/stun breaks. Force is overall fairly weak; Fire/Air have the best increase in damage for burst and are extremely close if not better in overall DPS depending on the build.

Fire/Air deal disproportionate amounts of damage compared to the rest of the sigils, and the damage being un-counterable and ICD’s being based upon hits landing and not attacks (I.E., repeated misses will not put them on ICD) makes them even further valuable in PvP environments, as the procs can’t be baited out.

vespers.1759:

DeceiverX.8361:

This leaves one skill doing bare minimum around 8k damage after a double dodge negating most of the damage from this skill alone.

This is probably the 3rd most shockingly kittened thing I have ever read on these forums.

congrats!

And that is , why?

When I ran fire/air on my longbow ranger, I was dealing around 12-16k off the RF with an additional 3-4k on fire/air alone. Did you read the beginning of the post explaining that I mentioned the person getting shot at first and thus reacting to the incoming arrows after a few of them hit?

Crapgame.6519:

DeceiverX.8361:

Fire/Air procs, however, are not, and that’s what people seem to fail to recognize is a huge source of damage from this build and many others offering burst damage.

This is also true for any sigil – you get to customize it so it is a equal playing field. Torment, corruption, etc. They all play a roll so it is up to us, the player, to choose. I run Fire and Air. But I also run incapacitation and a few others just to keep it fun. It doesn’t make it anyway OP than say a scepter wielding Mesmer with their torment sigil.

What’s problematic, though, is that an additional 3-4.3k damage is statistically guaranteed to happen from fire/air procs from the hits that do indeed land. This leaves one skill doing bare minimum around 8k damage after a double dodge negating most of the damage from this skill alone.

Fun with math. The funny thing is though that people can rearrange the numbers and math to paint there statistics in their favor. What doesn’t change is that we all have the same base endurance to tuck and roll

It seems a lot of people seem to neglect to consider just how broken these sigils are and why burst is artificially high on so many builds which shouldn’t have that kind of damage.

Not really broken since they have been around for a while now. Sigils, much like runes, are hard choices. We can’t have it all as much as the various OP thread starts try and paint it. To be a power berserker Ranger you give up a lot of defensive abilities. The Ranger forum has tried to play and provide countless ways to avoid both the range and rapid fire ability to no avail.

Every class in the game in 2 of the 3 metas of play, sPvP and WvW, players have to choose their setup until “THEY” find their comfort level. Remember, GW2 is built for comfort, not speed.

Thing is, it has little to do with rangers. Fire/Air procs are pretty much equally broken on all classes. It only is emphasized on rangers because it’s extremely likely to happen even if a double dodge is used – moreso than other classes because of RF’s multi-hit speed.

Not all classes can dodge the same, sorry. That’s just blatantly not true. Some classes have access to vigor, some permanently, some not at all.

Berserker longbow ranger is easy for what it offers and hard to master. Pressing 2 and dealing a massive sum of damage is not hard. I measure ranger skill mostly by position use and how well a ranger can fight without range. I’ll say it straight in that most of them suck.

I main a ranger and a thief, and can tell you as a fact the rune/sigil choice is not hard. Fire/Air or you’re doing it wrong. It mathematically offers the highest DPS and burst damage increase, and the utility options are not worth it based around other class features and pet utility. Even the best theorycrafters in the game like Nike openly admit these sigils are too much and offer too much damage with no counterplay options/reasonable alternatives. I refuse to use fire/air on my characters – even my crit strikes signet burst thief – on the sheer basis that I do not like to contribute to broken power-ups.

And don’t try to preach sacrificing defenses please. I go to my glass cannon ranger after playing my full valkyrie thief when I need something durable.

Could be something like using 1/3 of the time remaining on a full swap CD as initiative, allowing for quicker repeated swaps at the cost similar to basic abilities, but not punishing too much for swapping very close to the actual timer.

“Power ranger is not OP.”

No, it isn’t. A vast majority of the damage dealt by RF is avoidable.

Fire/Air procs, however, are not, and that’s what people seem to fail to recognize is a huge source of damage from this build and many others offering burst damage.

A player being caught off-guard by a power ranger using RF can reasonably avoid 7/10 shots when reacting with a stun break and double dodge, of which are at around 1-1.4k damage per hit on average, meaning RF’s damage range is 3 to 4.2k damage or so.

That’s not totally unreasonable – that’s being hit by a thief’s cloak and dagger and double dodging two subsequent backstab attempts.

What’s problematic, though, is that an additional 3-4.3k damage is statistically guaranteed to happen from fire/air procs from the hits that do indeed land. This leaves one skill doing bare minimum around 8k damage after a double dodge negating most of the damage from this skill alone.

It seems a lot of people seem to neglect to consider just how broken these sigils are and why burst is artificially high on so many builds which shouldn’t have that kind of damage.

The range used for the red outline is the exact range of the skill used. The reason why you’re getting extra range is because all projectile effects in the game that can be interfered with (i.e. longbow attacks, mesmer GS autos,) gain an extra bit of range based upon projectile trajectory as the game handles the physics of the projectile as a moving object with a velocity, and these calculations with the animation set used cannot be perfect to their range increment without the animation being wrong (obviously a problem in PvP and active defenses).

With practice you’ll reach a point where you know what is in range and what isn’t just by the relative object size/angles.

It breaks PvP more than PvE. Saving important skills on their auto-chain like canine knockdowns to allow for timing/chaining CC effects or keeping it close in a high-risk situation to perform a point-blank skill defensively/offensively on someone with a teleport is a massively important aspect of playing the ranger correctly in PvP environments.

It works well for aggessive since the pet will now engage as soon as a skill is directed with a target, even if the effect misses or is out of range (so this applies to melee weapons as well), however the lack of passive control is super important and makes the class near impossible to play in a skillful manner.

Tybalt is the real hero in GW2.

Seeing as we’re not because of Trahearne, and Trahearne didn’t actually do anything.

Simple. You just need to enter stealth closer to them to begin with to allow for a reposition during your stealth timer.

If you’re not running something like 5/6/0/0/3, do not expect huge backstab numbers. If you’re in sPvP, do not expect much at all.

You can also always choose not to use all three as well. If I find myself in a situation that requires an escape, such as a 1v2, I’ll normally also just activate two (IS and AS), blow up the glassy target with steal to also spike, and leave SoS for the extra mobility while using another CnD and HiS to cleanse conditions and run away after dropping the first target. If the other stays to res, I can re-engage while they’re busy doing that, pop SoS for extra might to commit to the fight for damage, and DPS them down or swap into my alternate set and skirmish around for a bit. The perks of valkyrie armor

As far as ascended goes, the difference overall is pretty marginal, especially so for the armor. You’re looking something along the lines of what I believe is around only 14 power and 1% crit damage on the armor (I.E. around 175-200 damage on a 10k stab), and the weapons are genuinely easy to make with not too huge of a damage margin. The armor only really means something when around 1300g of Omni infusions are applied to it – in which case it’s adding only a total of +44 power still with the 1% crit damage.

So really the armor in full infusions will only add a few hundred extra damage or so at peak, which isn’t much. The weapons will do the same if not a little more but obviously for a much, much lower price.