Guild Wars 2

1) WvW: D/P; PvE and sPvP: S/P
2) WvW: 0/30/30/10/0 PvE: 25/30/0/15/0 sPvP: 10/30/0/0/30
3) In general WvW > PvE > sPvP but I get bored quickly with either.

Who even stealths permanently? What’s the point?

What is even consider “perma-stealth” nowadays? Chaining 3 Heartseekers + Shadow Refuge. Is that considered perma-stealth?

I’ve seen people call Thieves “perma-stealthers” when using Cloak and Dagger.

People are way too liberal with this term.

Imo any build that can continuously stealth for 60+ seconds can be considered “perma-stealth”. But most builds that can do that are very inefficient.

coglin.1867:

This “down state is broken” crud is utter rubbish. It is simply a cheap excuse to blame ones own failure in battle. This becomes evident when everyone blames it, yet doesn’t have a single actual fact to support the claim. Just because you dislike it’s functionality is by no means an indication of a problem.

Ok then explain how it’s acceptable that a Guardian can revive his team-mate in 2.5 seconds, faster than any finisher is.

And this isn’t even accounting for all the finisher-delay tactics there are like knockbacks, CC and displacement.

Killing a glass-cannon takes at least 10 seconds in most situations. Being able to revive them so fast is in no way acceptable. The whole risk/reward ratio is off. You’re 2.5 second click negates the 10+ seconds of combat time and ability usage your enemy needed to even down him in the first place.

A point I’d like to add here is that Guardians have been displacing all other bunkers since launch too.

But we’ve gotten so used to it that everyone has stopped complaining.

Skyhammer is the sole reason I avoid SoloQ like the plague.

But here we are again ,complaining about the same thing we have complained about for well over half a year now.

But somehow, ANet still convinces themselves that people want this map in SoloQ. It really boggles my mind how out of touch they are with the game.

Spooko.5436:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Sic_%27Em%22

this get`sm hardest counter IG

Thieves stealth in sPvP? That’s news to me.

Desolation seems to have made itself a name for the most ambitious PvE.

Unfortunately this means that you will be stuck on overflows more often than not when trying to complete any of the popular PvE events.

I also don’t like the focus on zerg content and think the OP makes a good point.

Zerg content just isn’t the most appealing or engaging form of content. Zerg content has to be simple, intuitive and not overly punishing to various classes or builds. Most zerg fights ask nothing more of their players than to auto-attack and dodge the odd attack.

It’s also frustrating at times because the player-base has become conditioned to laziness and ineptitude during zerg-content. Most people still wait for resurrections instead of waypointing and don’t remedy their mistakes even after dying for the 3rd of 4th time. Bad players have become too complacent to improve because they are so used to being carried.

And the mechanics themselves aren’t fun either.

Just look at the screenshot below and try and avoid the next incoming instant-gib attack.

It’s nice to see ANet experimenting with various ways to progress their game, but I don’t think zerg content is the right direction.

EFWinters.5421:

Ah, this thread again.

Good players will learn how to play the downed state to their advantage, bad players will cry about it on the forums. Sorry but if you don’t know how to capitalize in any way on your enemy reviving players then you deserve to lose fights.

Ah this response again with no arguments to back it up or examples to make a point.

Just a typical “L2P” response with nothing constructive to add.

Yes there are ways to capitalize on revives but in most cases you’re not in any position to do so. It also doesn’t change the validity of any of the arguments made thus far, especially about the speed of revives in general.

Mesmers and Thieves compete for the same role in sPvP and the class mechanics of a Thief just lend themselves better to that particular role.

Outside of Portal Thieves can travel from A to B much faster.

They can also dump damage into a target much faster and regardless of cooldowns. A Mesmer needs Shatter and/or Blurred Frenzy to burst a target which requires setup and timing.

Thieves aren’t necessarily better in actual PvP fights but sPvP meta evolves around highly specialized roles, which Thieves just happen to fit best due to their class mechanics and/or abilities.

Difinitus.5614:

What is the meta for PvE?

S/p & SB?
10/30/0/0/30?

PvE? PvE is all about damage. Nothing else matters. So 30/30/0/0/10 is the hardcore dungeon build. But really you can play just about anything.

Weapons depend on the situation but S/P is used most of the time.

Ranger is by far the class I pick on most.

• It’s an incredibly easy class to play and level making most Ranger players much worse than most others.
• The type of player that is attracted to the Ranger class is similar to those that like the archetype in other MMOs. And they too were mostly bad. (autoshot-afk Hunters anyone?)
• While Spirit Rangers are overpowered, few people play the build in WvW. And anything else is just a walking loot-bag.
• Rangers don’t have any skills outside of constant arrow spam. At least that’s what it feels like fighting most Rangers. Spam…spam…spam….spam…..knockback….spam…spam.
• Most Rangers I encounter do half of my work by spaming their arrows into my Daggerstorm.
  _________________________________________________

The thing is, Rangers aren’t necessarily weak. But their player-base is just so much worse (on average), they have such poorly designed skills and are the kings of passive-play that they come across as pretty kitten most of the time.

In sPvP only bad Thieves will try to fight you 1v1, especially if you’re an Engineer. A Thief excels at “cheap-shotting” unprepared enemies and helping focus down individuals in team-fights.

Generally conditions and CC counter Thieves pretty hard, especially if you can just spam them non-stop like most Engineers can. Thieves don’t have much outside of Lyssa Runes to deal with condition spam.

Until about 2 months ago S/D evade-spam was the go-to Thief build in sPvP (10/30/0/30/0) it got some minor nerfs but nothing huge.

It relies on the excessive stacking of evades to survive while still dealing decent pressure with auto-attack and Larcenous Strike. I really enjoyed the play-style in sPvP but in WvW…it’s more of a duel build than a roaming build.

They could create challenging content with both desirable and prestigious rewards that require skill to overcome.

Liadri was a great example of this and required players to leave their comfort zone in order to overcome it.

Currently there is too much emphasis on zerg-content where you DPS race down specific mobs with dozens of other players. With hard-rezzing in place, few people ever have to suffer the consequence of their poor performance.

Small man group content is where the challenge should lie and unfortunately Fractals aren’t that place. They take too long and too much grind and don’t really offer desirable rewards that are exclusive to that content.

What puzzles me a little is that when it comes to upgrading tower and keeps, walls are upgraded before gates?

Why?

Gates are by far the most vulnerable part of the structure. 9 out of 10 times people will break into a tower or keep via the gates.

Why is this not the first structure we can reinforce?

It’s puzzling to me that walls would take priority over gates.

I agree that the supply drain from Trebs is probably a little powerful and very easy to apply/difficult to avoid.

That said, I don’t think attackers need an even easier time kicking in the door. 90% of the time defense feels futile anyway and nerfing what little defensive options you have won’t help that.

So I don’t mind fine-tuning the ability, but don’t straight-up nerf it into the ground.

kokiman.2364:

+ x% Damage/Crit/Condduration aren’t interessting either because they don’t change my playstyle.

True, but they don’t require you to go out of your way to get the bonus. In an ideal world, they too would be replaced with something more interesting but I think stacking Sigils take priority over them.

With the upcoming revision of Runes and Sigils I wanted to take a moment to talk about stacking Sigils like Bloodlust, Perception and Momentum.

In my opinion these Sigils aren’t very interesting in terms of game-play, aren’t an interesting choice and don’t encourage compelling game-play.

1. Having a stacking Sigil is the optimal choice for all classes. The stat boni outweigh any other potential bonus by far, especially since you can keep the stacks even after replacing the stack-weapon. So everyone has to have a stacking weapon of some sort.

2. The only choice you’re making is what stat you want to stack. Toughness, Healing Power, Power, Condition Damage or Precision. And that choice is often already made by the build you play.

3. The stacking itself isn’t a compelling mechanic. In PvE it just means you use a certain weapon to gain the stacks and then replace it. In WvW it encourages you to go out of your way and farm mobs and NPCs for a while before attaining your maximum efficiency. It also has a minor snowballing element to it as the victor of a zerg-fight will come out with a tangible stat-advantage thanks to the stacking Sigils. Not a biggy but something worth considering.

4. Stacking Sigils have very little in terms of interesting skill-interactions. They don’t change your build or play-style in any way and don’t interact with any class mechanics. They are just stat-sticks.

5. They also happen to make downed-state, map-switches, and death that much more annoying because you lose you stacks.

So with all that said I rest my case. I for one don’t think stacking-sigils make for very compelling game-play as they aren’t interesting choices and don’t encourage positive game-play.

I for one would not miss them if they were to be removed/replaced with the upcoming Sigil revision.

I can’t see how you can be pro weapon-sigil stacking and then argue against Applied Fortitude and Strength.

They are both effectively the same thing and give a massive edge to those who stack them. Now that’s not what I have a real problem with. Having an edge because of character progression is ok. But it’s the nature of the skills themselves.

Applied Fortitude simply says “go farm a few guards after you respawn”. Farming Guards is neither interesting nor something that needs to be encouraged. It’s not particularly skillful either. There’s just nothing to it and this condition seems completely arbitrary.

Weapon stacking is in a similar boat. Going around farming mobs to gain stacks just isn’t hugely compelling and does nothing for your realm. Yet this is exactly what stacking weapons ask you to do. They also make downed-state annoying because it wipes all your stacks.

I don’t mind a little power-creep in WvW, but I do mind the form in which it is currently implemented. Neither farming mobs nor Guards in particularly interesting and does not need to be rewarded or encouraged.

I would much rather see stacking weapons removed (they are a no-brainer choice anyway) and Applied Fortitude turned into something that interacts with your play-style.

Something like “heal for 20% of your health upon killing a Guard” or “gain 20 seconds on Swiftness upon killing a Guard” would be much more interesting than what we have now.

I’m in the same boat as OP,

I play D/P because it’s incredibly effective, utilizes all its skills and gets results.

But D/D has the far more compelling play-style. Especially the ability to seamlessly “crowd-surf” with Cloak and Dagger is very cool. It’s also a fairer build to compete against as Cloak and Dagger can be countered. But urgh, it’s so simplistic with such a limited tool-set it really isn’t all that effective.

I’d love to see the seamless and compelling play-style of D/D combined with the effectiveness and utility of D/P.

Ok, what’s the trick to killing it so quickly?

Even with 50 people per Knight kills seem to take upwards of 10 minutes. How do you achieve the necessary 100% DPS increase?

Scarlet Slaying Potions are obvious, as is getting the buff from the Trader’s Forum. But what else? That doesn’t double your DPS in any way.

It’s funny you say that with Sword Pistol being the new fotm.

I’m playing it and I think it’s awesome and incredibly effective.

Realist.5812:

Da Sonic.6521:

I just want to point out that condition builds are literally the definition of dps.

Well to me they’re damage over time (DoT), not DPS. But we could just be arguing semantics.

DPS is actually a role, used in a different context (aka. tank, healer, DPS).

In sPvP we have similar, but different roles, namingly Bunker, Burst-assist and point holder.

Point Holders are your typical Condition spamers with high durability while burst assist tends to be a Thief (or Mesmer).

Legendaries have become so abundant their only redeeming quality is the easily accessible stat-change.

I was wondering what you guys are expecting for this mystical feature patch that has been announced, but not much revealed. We know it won’t contain any new content but instead revise some of the existing mechanics.

What do you think that could be?

I’ll start off the list of my personal hopes/expectations with the few items that have been confirmed.

• Reworked Sigils (confirmed)
• Reworked Rune-Sets (confirmed)
• Class balancing (likely)
• Ranger revision (likely)
• Account-wide WXP (likely)
• Golem and Roaming-Mastery spec-line
• Changes to the WvW scoring
• Changes to Rally and Revive-mechanics
• Removal of contested Dungeons
• Dungeons revised to discourage stacking
• Dredge Fractal revised
• Cooking and Jewelcrafting 500

All of these points have been acknowledged at some point over the past year or are reasonably deduced from previous comments or context. If I can think of any more I will add to the list.

Yeah, the Mystic Forge wasn’t designed around the ides of mass production. It needs a redesign.

I really don’t understand the mechanics of this event either.

Tonight on the Drakkar Home server, at 10PM (aka. peak hours) we barely had enough people to kill each Knight.

Red had probably about 45
Blue had roughly 40
And Green had about 35

Yet Green was by far the quickest, hitting 50% at the 9 minute mark. However the rest suddenly took much, much longer and they only just made it in time.

Blue seemed to have a more predictable pace and only barely got a kill within the 15 minutes.

Red failed, despite having the most players by far.

How does this make sense? Also how is this achievement ever supposed to work? Aside from Scarlet Slaying potions and the Order Buffs I don’t see how you can possibly achieve a 300% DPS increase which would be required to complete the achievement.

It makes absolutely no sense.

For me personally, no, but I did it in a weird fashion.

1. I entered the final confrontation before beating the Hologram encounter. This was on the first or second day where everything was still terribly buggy.

I was a bit perplexed about the whole situation because I did not know how we ended up there. And “only” having to stomp Scarlet wasn’t all that satisfying.

2. I then when for the quick-finisher achievement which turned out to be very frustrating and forced me to watch the unskipable cutscenes over and over again. To me the mechanics of this achievement are still totally random and illogical as my Warrior couldn’t do it, but my Thief had no problems.

3. Overall the experience was too zergy. I would have thought Scarlet deserves her own 5 man content. All this boss zerging, overflows, achievement hunting etc. really distracts from the core experience and makes thing frustrating that aren’t or shouldn’t be.

While I think the maths is right you also have to consider the effect this has on your team.

Yes, you are effective if you bind at least one players. But while you are on far, your team will be outnumbered at mid, especially if they have someone at close too.

And your decision to push far may at times, result in their deaths as well.

It’s still advantageous to have a decap Engi, no doubt, but I don’t think you can simply “calculate” your value.

Every encounter in this game is insanely melee hostile while being a snooze-fest for most ranged. The Knights are no exception.

And you know what? It’s the same in nearly all MMOs.

Somehow designers can’t stop giving bosses auto-attacks, a form of attack that nearly always targets melees. This makes somewhat sense when you have a tanking role, but GW2 does not have tanks, so auto-attacks make no sense on bosses.

At ranged, you may have to avoid 1-2 special attacks every once in a while. In melee range you have to do that + avoid auto-attacks and all while seeing absolutely kitten-all because of the excessive particle effects.

There should simply be no in-combat resurrections.

That would improve EVERY aspect of this game and discourage such lazy and anti-social behavior.

Obviously content like the Hologram fight would need to be slightly revised to accommodate this change but it would vastly improve the game in all areas.

Yeah, don’t push far if you’re pugging. It basically risks a potential win at mid for an unlikely and unsustainable win at far.

Go mid with the rest of your team and be a DPS assist, that’s your role.

Thieves aren’t 1v1 heroes and shouldn’t be played as such (although there are classes we do very well against).

Since all popular Thief builds are very glass you should hang about the outside perimeter of a team-fight and pick out a target to focus. Then switch to your main weapon set and go in for some burst and get out again asap. Switch back to Shortbow….pick a target……and go in again….rise and repeat.

Don’t make yourself an attractive target because you can’t take the punishment.

They are too slow.

And even with this slow pace they make poor design choices or fix symptoms, not causes.

The slow pace of change hasn’t made the game any better. I’d wager it has made it worse. Imo we need a balance patch every 2 months or so. We don’t always need massive changes but minor ones on a more regular basis.

Ok I messed around a bit this afternoon trying out some of the combinations described above and basically concluded that the default was best.

1. The fact that you daze is more important than the daze duration. In practice it barely matters if your daze lasts 0.5 seconds or 0.7 seconds. What matters is that you interrupt whatever ability they are trying to use. So all these added daze-durations don’t really make a big difference.

2. Soldier’s amulet is nice, but not more effective. It’s nice to stand a little longer, especially in team-fights. But essentially you trade-off damage for sustain, which ends up a fat zero in the end. You may live longer, but you also need longer to kill a target, which just isn’t all that great.

3. Lyssa Runes are hard to top. The problem with passive condition removal is that it’s unreliable. When you need conditions removed you need them removed NOW…not over the next 10 seconds. The random boons applied with every heal are just an icing on the cake.

The attractiveness of Lyssa Runes is directly tied to the abundance of conditions.

A lot of classes simply don’t have the skills/mechanics to deal with a full condition dump (like Signet of Spite) and they make up for that by using Runes of Lyssa.

Once conditions get turned down a little so will Lyssa Runes start disappearing.

So with 10/30/0/0/30 being the FotM I wanted to take a moment to debate how you might fine-tune the build a little since it has very little base-line survivability and getting into “the thick of it” and cleaving with Pistol Whip is what really makes it stand out.

1. Question is regarding Sigils:

Is Sigil of Paralyzation still the most obvious choice for the build? Is adding 15% to an 0.5 second daze really worth-while or is it better invested in damage or condition remove? Sigil of Fire or Accuracy or Force would seem like an obvious contender as might be a Sigil of Purity to compensate for the lack of condition removal. Also, can we put a Sigil of Paralyzation in a Pistol off-hand and still get the bonus?

2. Runes of the Mesmer worth it?

Currently I’m still running Runes of Lyssa for the condition removal. But Runes of the Mesmer seem like an ideal fit for a daze-spam build, with the added daze duration and adding both Power and Precision.

3. Amulet Choice – Soldier vs. Berserker

Berserker Jewel is always our go-to choice. But given how poor the base survivability of a 10/30/0/0/30 build is I think that a Soldier amulet is a serious option. The damage difference also isn’t as big as you might think originally. Soldier amulet + Berserker jewel is also an option, but jewels are really a very minor difference.

Currently I’m considering Mesmer Runes + Sigil of Purity/Paralyzation + Soldier Amulet + Berserker Jewel.

But maybe there are other things worth considering? Any thought or input are appreciated.

I am not aware of any stun-duration differences between sPvP and PvE/WvW.

There was once a rounding bug that rounded stun-durations to the next full second but that was fixed a while back.

So basically it works as advertised afaik.

What type of content is this for? Because S/D, while being a decent weapon-set, only really has a clearly defined role in sPvP.

If you are talking about WvW then S/D doesn’t really have a clearly defined play-style. You can build on evade-spam, which would require 20 points in Acrobatics but there are other ways to play it too.

-Yes
-Anything that is considered a Daze i.e. Pistol Whip stun and the Steal daze. It also affects the Headcrack we can steal from Guardians but I have not tested it.

I’m not convinced Thieves have a problem with Grandmaster traits in particular, rather than just having a lot of lackluster traits in general.

Executioner for example, is really just a 10% DPS increase on average, just like a lot of minor or other traits. It also doesn’t change anything about the Thief play-style.

Thieves need more interesting traits that somehow interact with abilities and mechanics and less traits that just add a certain amount of passive damage.

We have been telling this ANet for the past 9 months. There has been at least one new thread every day complaining about it.

It is the sole reason I have turned my back on SoloQ.

And yet, for some unfathomable reason, ANet still forces it upon us. They have convinced themselves somehow that a large enough amount of people enjoy it to warrant it staying in SoloQ.

I have never met any of these people.

It’s funny how it’s not OP and never really has been in the past year, not in PvE, not in WvW and not in sPvP.

That said, having a stun, lots of damage and an evade all stacked into one ability was always asking for trouble.

I think it’s because reviving scales with Healing Power and Bunker Guardians stack a lot of it. Healing abilities affect downed people too iirc.

Ok so on Tuesday loot was somewhat inconsistent, with boxes sometimes dropping, sometimes not.

On Wednesday we had boxes dropping from each Knight on every try. Very generous, admittedly.

On Thursday we now have no loot dropping from any Knight (or maybe just one a day). Not cool and feels very unrewarding.

People should get loot from every try. Maybe not 6 Champion boxes, but 1-2 per Knight per try is fair.

ANet really outdid themselves with their crappy achievements this time.

As usual we spend the first few days wondering which ones are bugged and which are working as intended.

Then they give us some achievements that depend entirely on random circumstances outside of our control.

The worst is probably the achievement that is best gotten by /afking the entire fight. That is, IF YOU DON’T RANDOMLY spawn right on top of a lazer-beam when entering the fight.

I mean WTF!?!

That’s by far the dumbest and most frustrating kitten I’ve witnessed. Wait an hour and achievement gets ruined as you spawn in…well played.

I’m not even going to start on the Scarlet Finisher achievement that is INCREDIBLY dependent on you class. Endure Pain, Stability, Dodges, Quickness….nothing worked on my Warrior. But the Thief just teleports in and stealth-stopms…..GG.

I wish I hasn’t had to watch those cut-scenes over and over again….

You really outdid yourself this round ANet, congratulations.

The biggest joke is that even with an 8% nerf to Healing Signet Warriors would probably be just as durable because of the nerf to _crit-Damage and possibly some incoming nerfs to conditions.

An 8% nerf is a joke when burst is being reduced by 20%.

Yes, I main a Thief.

And frankly, I don’t see any indication of Pistol Whip receiving any more QQ than any other Thief ability. To me this sounds like selective reading.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues with it.

Pistol Whip is mechanically similar to Blurred Fenzy, an attack a lot of Mesmer builds build around. Pistol Whip is essentially a spammable form of Blurred Frenzy with an added stun.

Pistol Whip was never all that popular until recently. The stationary nature of it combined with the long after-cast often made it problematic to use. But in the recent meta people have adapted and it’s become quite useful and popular, especially for its ability to cleave and interrupt frequently.

Thief abilities are always going to be difficult to balance because they can be spammed, unlike other classes.

Imo an ability that stuns, evades and deals respectable cleave damage is difficult to balance, especially when Initiative management has become easier than ever for Thieves.

I don’t really have a seamless solution. You could further increase the cost to make it less spamable, but I’m not sure if that would really fix anything. And honestly, it’s already quite costly.

You could reduce the amount of attacks from 9 to….say 8 or 7 but that would require changing the animation.

You could remove, nerf the stun, but that would make it too similar to Blurred Fenzy.

Sylvari are ANets most original race and one they created specifically for this game. It’s no surprise they are a focus point of the story.

Even one of the writers once said the liked the Sylvari most.

So none of this is really surprising, not that it bothers me much. Personally I think Asura are the greatest master race and clearly they agree.

The last two times I entered the fight against Scarlets Hologram me and the entire rest of the zerg that followed me into the portal were dropped straight into a lazer, killing everyone on arrival.

I’ts extremely annoying because it ruins any chances of trying for the achievement (which most seem to do by AFKing the fight).

Please fix the spawn in location so that it doesn’t outright kill you upon arrival.