Do you realize that sometimes black powder is used just for that single ranged blind , especially with pistol and sword mainhand? For instance, it can interrupt CC from some classes’ downed state at range, or an incomming burst aimed at your teammate, if enemy has stability.Your suggestion would dumb down this class.
And as written above, it costs 6 initiative, which is a lot.
To be fair, I wasn’t thinking about S/P much. But then again you still have Headshot which serves the same purpose as an interrupt.
So the point remains.
Stealth is OP, no doubt, or at least when specced into Shadow Arts.
But that should be used as an excuse to allow skills to function in a way they weren’t intended to. The stealth-detracking is terribly slow in this game. Even in PvE mobs take 2-3 seconds before they stop tracking you in stealth.
You can test it on a guard. Use Cloak and Dagger and run around them in circles. They’ll keep tacking you almost until your stealth expires. That’s just a terribly laggy mechanic that really shout be fixed.
Black Powder is one of the most powerful skills a Thief has. I think it’s a notoriously difficult skill to balance since the D/P build relies on it heavily for both stealth and melee mitigation and yet it can be pretty difficult to counter for a number of classes.
A part of that and something that is often ignored, is the Blinding Shot that is fired at the enemy when using Black Powder. This is a single Blind with 900 range with a very subtle animation and very difficult to avoid.
This Blinding Shot makes it very difficult to counter Black Powder since your next attack is going to miss anyhow. If you want to Headshot someone inside a Black Powder you’re going to miss, if a Mesmer wants to blast Illusionary Wave that too will miss. Anything that you might want to use to counter Black Powder will miss initially and is really difficult to account for.
Hence I believe that removing this single, ranged blinding shot is a good way to offer more counter-play opportunities against Black Powder without nerfing the core functionality of the skill, which is excellent mitigation at point-blank range.
Would you run Hidden Killer or Executioner? H.K seems better for D/D while Ex. for D/P.
Hidden Killer , almost always when relying on Backstabs. You just don’t have enough Fury uptime to make Executioner viable. Builds that don’t rely on Backstab will typically use Executioner though.
Shadow Refuge is actually one of the few excellently designed skills on the Thief class.
- It’s generally useful and one of our most popular utilities.
- It offers unique group utility no other class can offer.
- It has a useful combo-field effect.
- It’s fairly well telegraphed.
- It offers ample counter-play opportunities in the form of AoE or CC.
These are all signs of a well-designed skill.
And regarding the healing…..it’s only really good when you’re specced into Shadow Rejuvenation. Without it it barely heals at all.
Making youtube videos or having a twitch.tv channel is what makes people “good” in the eyes of MMO players, not actual skill.
Imo playing classes in GW2 is incredibly easy and nothing to boast about. Mastering a class in GW2 is far easier than in any other MMO. “Skill” comes from situational awareness and group synergy. But those are universals skills, not class-specific ones.
30 Shadow Arts and 30 Critical Strikes are a must have.
The only optional part is if you like Mug or prefer having 10 points in Acrobatics. That’s a matter of personal taste. Some like Mug, personally however I don’t.
The only trait that you might want to switch around when alternating between the weapon-sets is Cloaked in Shadows. It’s extremely useful for D/D but somewhat redundant when running D/P. That’s something you might want to switch with Infusion of Shadows or Shadow Protector at times.
Otherwise both builds use both Shadows Embrace and Shadow Rejuvenation.
I don’t miss the lake and the Quaggan. Nothing interesting ever happened there and it was effectively a waste of space.
But the ruins aren’t much better either.
1. Yes, there’s the aesthetic clash of having what looks like an sPvP map in the center of a comparatively bland WvW map. It looks odd and it plays odd.
2. Then there’s the capture mechanic, which is just standing around a lot. It’s not fun and there’s rarely fights over the buff. People will just wait for you to leave and then cap it back rather than fight over it.
3. The buff is far too important for the overall score. Something like 30% of the total WvW score comes from finishers. So maintaining a single buff is essential. For something to important though, it’s incredibly boring.
4. In no PvP MMO have people every enjoyed fighting over buffs. It’s just not an interesting or compelling objective to fight over.
I’d call the whole thing a total waste that didn’t improve WvW in the slightest.
Traps work on Rangers because they’re a turret class.
But traps make no sense of a hyper-mobile class like the Thief. We just don’t sit around in a spot waiting for someone to trigger a trap. It just doesn’t mesh with our play-style.
d/p is 100 times easier to pick up than d/d. Running d/d well takes a relatively good overall knowledge about the defensive and offensive skills many professions have so that you don’t try to c&d at the wrong moment. There is also no automatic blind spam in d/d to safe your kitten .
With d/p all you need to learn is to press two buttons in a row. You don’t even need to learn the camera trick anymore.
If all you do is spam stealth with D/P then you’re doing it wrong and won’t achieve much.
In fact D/P uses far less stealth than D/D because you have great mobility and can actually face-tank enemies thanks to Black Powder.
D/D on the other hand is just constantly chaining Cloak and Dagger. Hardly more intricate, just less forgiving.
Around the time TESO launches.
I guarantee it.
I’m ok with Weakness being pretty strong.
What’s not ok is that it is applied so generously through various auto-attacks and other abilities. Weakness is probably the most abundant condition in this game, next to Bleeds. Every second mob seems to apply it too.
Sure, you can chance the effect of Weakness, but please stop handing it out like candy on Halloween.
It might be more beneficial in relative terms, as someone with low Power might be able to double their effective Power by stacking Might while someone with already high Power would see a relatively smaller increase.
In absolute terms however they are identical. There are no diminishing returns in GW2 afaik, aside from maybe Toughness.
The whole communication of this “feature patch” has been a great disaster.
Why do they talk about stuff that is still months away with no real release date while still talking about other issues along the way.
What happened to “one thing at a time”?
I know they don’t want everyone running off and pre-ordering TESO but seriously, only announce something if you have something to say about it.
All we know about this “feature patch” is that it will introduce Ferocity and a reworks to Runes and Sigils. And this was announced 6 weeks ago….
The builds are practically identical with both so feel free to mess around. Both tend to use x/30/30/x/0 with the same runes and gear.
D/P is probably the overall more powerful set, especially when roaming. D/D shines when you have lots of targets to pick from, when engaging in zerg-combat for example. It also has more burst.
But it has a tough time against some of the more tanky and CC heavy builds out there, which are becoming increasingly popular.
CC should be considered a separate condition. So immobilize and fear aren’t affected by + Condition Duration.
Barrage in itself is not OP.
But the fact that you can so easily kill siege on walls is. It’s just a really dumb side-effect of how the targeting works in this game.
Walls, something that should really offer an upper hand, are really more of a death-trap and a big reason why defense often feels futile.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Heals are about the only thing I can reliably interrupt with Headshot and only when I expect them. Most seem to have a cast-time of roughly 1 second.
However I do play on WLAN and the game is slightly laggy/unresponsive at times. I’m not sure if it’s my connection or the game so others may get better results.
OP is right,
this has been an issue since day 1 and has never been addressed. Don’t mock him for playing the game the way it was meant to be played.
Mobs respawn ridiculously fast in this game and have done so ever since launch. I’ve been frustrated by this on multiple occasions at it’s a big reason why I hate leveling in this game.
If you enter a cave, barely 20 yards deep, you can be your kitten you’ll have to fight your way out again because mobs respawn after 30-60 seconds. It’s a joke. Even with full Berserker gear you’ll have a hard time not dodging into respawning mobs.
This also goes against the whole core combat concept of active dodging and movement. When movement is so dangerous because of constant adds then you’re better of standing in a corner and auto-attacking.
This is something that could be fixed so easily. I mean a respawn timer is surly a simple line of code somewhere that just needs its variable updated.
Because the current respawn rate is broken.
First off, what build do you play?
Assuming you’re D/P, since that’s the most powerful Thief set for roaming I’ll state:
1. I don’t know, but I’ve never had a problem with DPS Guardians. Black Powder generally does a great job at mitigating their damage output. The Burn is nasty, but you can work around that. Not really sure what to say here.
2. Minion Master Necros are a beast, but not that common in WvW. It’s hard to be specific but in general you can try and outlast them. Don’t go for a quick kill, as their pet stun will ruin it for you as will their Deathshroud. But once their Deathshround is spent you can apply enough pressure for a kill.
3. What your probably encountered was a Axe + Shield + Greatsword Warrior in Full Berserker gear with Hambow traits. They are mean, and their Eviscerates can hit for 12.000 easy. But again, Black Powder can mitigate most of their damage. Just be weary of 100 Blades since it partially penetrates Black Powder. Make sure to kite or out-stealth their Berserker Stance and Endure Pain and you should be able to kill them just as fast as they can kill you.
Shouldn’t the Lyssa Runes alone put you at roughly 38% crit-chance?
I that case I don’t see how this is different than your standard Hidden Killer + Valkyrie build people have been running since…..well forever.
Ok you chose Cavalier gear over Valkyrie in many cases but that doesn’t make a huge difference in play-style.
Your utility choice is slightly different, I’ll admit. Not sure if I personally would like running without Shadowstep but that’s besides the point. Personally I’ve never been too fond of Smoke Screen either, at least not in WvW. The cast-time and stationary nature make it highly situational.
Also, who or what is “Snuffles”? Or are you talking about your own character in the 3rd person?
Lyssa runes dont give any crit dmg…
No, but they give 165 Precision, which is roughly 8% Crit-chance.
I figured that would put you way above 31% you quoted. At least I seem to have about 35% Crit-chance even when wearing full Valkyrie gear and Runes of Strength.
I can’t imagine all that coming from the Ascended Trinkets.
I’m not sure that that’s really the best way to go about it. It seems counter-intuitive to make supplies the scoring mechanism when they’re supposed to be a means to an end.
It would also emphasize farming/babysitting Dolyaks, which isn’t exactly the most fun aspect of WvW. Ideally the scoring system rewards what players like doing in WvW anyway. And that’s killing each other and fighting for objectives.
There are two crucial changes required to make WvW scoring more competitive and reflective of actual effort, rather than coverage.
1. Kills should award a point, all the time, anywhere, regardless of Bloodlust. Killing players is a core part of the WvW experience and it should be awarded as such.
Bloodlust can still provide a stat-bonus for roamers to fight around but it shouldn’t be as important as it currently is, considering how easy it is to take.
2. Scaling the score with current player participation. What 1500 people fight for during prime-time has to matter more than what 40 people fight over at 5 AM. Currently it does not, and that’s not cool.
My suggestions was to scale the speed of the ticks with currently player activity, ranging for ticking every 5 minutes (all maps full to the brim) to every 60 minutes (all maps completely empty). But there are other ways to scale the score too.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Well I outlined this idea in more detail a while back.
But essentially I’d move steath from a utility/weapon skill side-effect to a class skill. So it becomes a F1/F2 ability similar to what Mesmers and many other classes have.
This ensures that stealth can play a role in all Thief builds and won’t just be exclusive for the ones that have Cloak and Dagger or Black Powder.
The new stealth however would consume Initiative when used at a rate of 1/second, thus limiting the amount of time we can spend in stealth. To compensate, weapon-skills will become a little cheaper to use.
“Revealed” as such wouldn’t need to exist any longer. However natural Initiative regeneration should be suppressed for a few seconds after leaving stealth.
This ensures that stealth is used as a defensive move, rather than being both a defensive and offensive move and can’t be chained extensively for ages.
We’d also lose our stealth attacks. Instead Cloak and Dagger would chain into Backstab, but no longer require stealth. When wielding a Pistol mainhand it would chain into Sneak Attack.
This would make both these “hard-hitters” more telegraphed and fairer to avoid, while still being powerful tools.
Obviously this is a pretty fundamental change but one I think that would make the Thief class far more fun to play and play against with more counter-play opportunities but also more variety and ways to shine. Needless to say some traits would need to change and others replaced completely, but ultimately it’s for the better.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
So this is for WvW then?
The standard D/P or D/D build is x/30/30/x/0. So 30 points in both Critical Strikes and Shadow Arts and the final 10 points either in Deadly Arts for Mug or in Acrobatics for anything really.
I like this idea. It would seem like something that benefits both parties.
However it would need a clear visual indicator so Thieves know they have been marked.
sPvP in this game is by far the worst of any MMO I’ve played.
Everything is just a massive AoE spam-fest on choke points. It doesn’t matter what skills you use as long as you rotate everything on cooldown.
Most classes evolve around a single gimmick that they exploit to the max.
CC is everywhere and impossible to avoid on node fights. Stun, into fear into Stun again is just so annoying.
I hate it.
Shouldn’t the Lyssa Runes alone put you at roughly 38% crit-chance?
I that case I don’t see how this is different than your standard Hidden Killer + Valkyrie build people have been running since…..well forever.
Ok you chose Cavalier gear over Valkyrie in many cases but that doesn’t make a huge difference in play-style.
Your utility choice is slightly different, I’ll admit. Not sure if I personally would like running without Shadowstep but that’s besides the point. Personally I’ve never been too fond of Smoke Screen either, at least not in WvW. The cast-time and stationary nature make it highly situational.
Also, who or what is “Snuffles”? Or are you talking about your own character in the 3rd person?
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
PU is basically the Mesmer equivalent of other cheesy builds you find on other classes.
PU is to Mesmers what.
D/P is to Thieves.
Healing Signet is to Warriors.
Spirits are to Rangers.
etc.
Maybe not overpowered in the grand scale of things but sort of cheap and cheesy to play. But most builds have something like that available to them.
I myself was never a fan in any game of 1 shot mechanics.
It’ s a lazy and poor design ideal that limits the player base as a whole.
The problem with 1-shots in GW2 is that even they don’t make content more challenging, just more tedious.
Thanks to downed-state and easy revives no amount of damage is going to be hard to overcome.
I really haven’t played EotM extensively enough to fairly evaluate everyone of the following features but that won’t stop me from sharing my opinion.
Scoring on capture of objectives
I never really noticed this but it sounds good if the scoring system itself is changed. I don’t think we need to further incentivize keep-swapping. There’s plenty of that going on already.
scaling creatures
Haven’t noticed this either and I don’t think it makes a big difference. Scaling Lords is nice giving everyone in the zerg enough time to tag the mob, but it doesn’t really make WvW anymore interesting.
new and more difficult NPCs
Again, PvE in WvW is never going to be interesting. The mobs here might have different skills but they’re just as useless and tedious as they are in regular WvW.
unique bosses at each objective
What’s with all the PvE stuff? Who cares, it makes no difference. Sure it would be cool if Keep Lords were actually threatening to a Zerg but that requires raid-like boss mechanics, mechanics we currently don’t have.
increased emphasis on verticality
I hate verticality. It’s confusing and counter-intuitive. It also doesn’t make WvW any better. Open fields with certain highlights and strategic elements make good WvW, not some islands in the sky.
more chokepoints
If by that you mean more bridges, no thanks. Choke points in general are cool and having a few key locations on each map imperative. But EotM went overboard with all the bridges.
a much shorter match time
Ok for an overflow map, but not for actual WvW. Going below a week makes everything feel less consequential and thus even hollower than it currently does.
and destructible terrain
This could, in theory, enhance regular WvW quite a bit, depending on the implementation. But it’s hard to make such a general statement as it depends a lot of the specific implementation.
People always say Eles are bad, and in sPvP I’ll admit they certainly don’t seem all that strong. They seem to either be very tanky but with no real DPS, or extremely glassy with high burst but kittenty survivability.
In WvW however they seem to be both at the same time. I don’t see how they can ever be considered underpowered there. The amount of damage they can put out despite having extreme survivability with constant boons is pretty ridiculous really.
It seems like two different worlds.
mercury touched on a few good points, but it still remains a possibility.
The PS4 has currently sold roughly 5 Mio. untits and is going strong. That’s a pretty healthy install-base for such a young product. So I’d wager there certainly is a market for such a game.
With GW2 making 100 Mio. a year, I think there is a financial incentive to try the PS4.
However I see issues with the game itself.
GW2 is really built on an outdated engine with outdated software. It’s written for 32-bit software and DirectX 9.
The PS4 however is 64-bit and uses an modern API, probably similar to Mantle.
Software wise you’d basically have to rewrite the entire basis for the game to make it run well on the PS4. Not impossible but a long and tedious task, especially if you don’t have experienced console developers working on it.
Then there’s the actual game-play itself. You’d have to add some sort of voice-com, since chat won’t be an option, rework the entire UI for controllers and find a way to get the control scheme to work. But compared to the engine rewrite these tasks are fairly trivial.
Long-term it might be a good way for NC soft to gather experience developing for the new generation of consoles. They could learn a lot from it, especially if/how MMOs work on consoles.
But it would be a long and costly process and I don’t know how risk-averse NC soft is.
The problem isn’t that Zerker gear is somehow superior to other gear, it’s just that DPS is the ONLY thing that matters in dungeons and high-level fractals.
DPS also has the side-effect of making things a lot easier thanks to the vastly higher kill-speed.
I recently had the pleasure of doing Fractals level 49 on my Thief. I have 16.000 HP which is quite significant for a Thief.
But guess what, it made no difference whatsoever. Basically anything that hit you was a 1-shot. The Vitality was completely wasted. The most extreme example are the mobs in the Char Fractal where the Mages kill you instantly before there’s even any sort of animation.
4000 extra HP in that scenario made little to no difference.
15% extra Precision however would have.
The appeal of Zerker gear is because of stupid game-design and its obsession with instant-gibs. No amount of stat shuffling is going to change that.
That’s why every PvE class guide is basically about how to maximize your DPS/group DPS.
Definitely not,
Bunkers are already prevalent enough. They don’t need to become even harder to kill.
Conditions don’t need an indirect buff either.
In fact I find that a Power build vs. Power build fight is about the only fight in this game that feels balanced, skillful and fun. Everything else is just cheesey.
One-Shot them with a Shadowstep/Steal/Infiltrator Signet + C&D + Backstab. If executed perfectly the Thief can be killed even inside a Black Powder.
You realize your account name is displayed right here on screen? No need signing with Mister X.
The longer I play this game the more bitter I get about it too.
Tonight I had the questionable pleasure of taking part in a lengthy siege battle for our homelands main keep. It dragged on for a while and was good fun, watching zerg upon zerg break on our walls and arrow carts.
We were well prepared, they were not.
That was until they unleashed their ultimate weapon. Get enough people in a single spot at the right time and lag becomes your best friend (if attacking).
Suddenly most skills stop working, arrow carts stop firing and all your best laid plans fall apart not because you were outplayed, but because this game cannot handle what it offers.
Needless to say the defense was easily overcome once the lag kicked in.
This is a truly frustrating experience, not just for me personally but the entire server population who participated in the battle. It’s bad enough seeing attacker constantly revive each other making it impossible to cull their numbers. But losing something you fought so hard for just because of massive lag…..that’s really new territory.
Until tonight I really wasn’t going to pay much attention to TESO, but tonight’s experience really changed my mind.
Since WvW queues are no longer a deterrent the servers have started cannibalizing each other.
The good servers feed off the medicore ones leaving behind a bare skeleton of what was. There’s no incentive to stick to crappy servers outside of some form of loyalty. The points-per-tick system makes coverage the all-decisive measure of success.
WvW population is also down this week simply because farming Lion’s Arch is so kitten lucrative.
WvW population will also take another dip when Elder Scrolls Online launches in 6 weeks time. But that’s nothing you can stop.
So yeah, it’s going to be a rough WvW for the coming weeks and I don’t see much change ahead.
Agree
I question the ability of Anet developers to actually think ahead before making a change. More and more people transfering to the larger servers because of it. Anet were blind if they didn’t see this coming. Combine with new content and WvW is a joke.
It’s almost as if they have conceded the WvW concept to EOS and daoc unleased, because they sure do everything in their power to ignore it.
Well transfers earn them a lot of money. So I doubt it’s a problem for them. In fact I’d wager transfers are the only way they earn much money from WvWers.
And the feature update they announced is directed straight at TESO and designed to minimize the player fluctuation during that time. It’s pretty common practice among MMOs today.
Release a massive update around the same time your competitor launches to retain your players with interesting stuff until their curiosity dies down. ANet wasn’t born yesterday and have planned ahead accordingly.
You can beat your kitten the “feature update” will come pretty close to 4.04.2014, the date TESO launches.
28 minutes till Hitler…..well done internet.
It’s design like this that drives everyone towards Berserker gear.
What’s the point in stacking survivability when mobs hit you for such ridiculous damage? At least with Berserker’s you can hit them back equally hard.
After having this map available to us now for a month, I do question whether this was really the wisest employment of development resources.
Don’t get me wrong, the map is pretty, it has some interesting mechanics and it seems bigger than it really is, but overall i don’t think it has enhanced WvW in any meaningful way.
Sure, having an overflow map is nice. Certainly beats sitting in a queue. But now there’s no more downsides to being on a high-population server. No reason not to jump on the bandwagon.
It also hasn’t enhanced the core WvW experience in any way. The actual maps that matter (Borderlands and EB) are still as bland and unoriginal as they have always been.
EotM is also incredibly easy to ignore completely unless you specifically seek it out.
I don’t know, but I don’t think that the 1+ year of work that went into this map really enhances the game in a meaningful and lasting way. It’s too optional, too inconsequential and basically a place for the Karma-Trains to roam.
I shed a tear for all the awesome enhancements WvW might have experienced if the resources had been better spent.
But that’s just my 2 cents.
Since WvW queues are no longer a deterrent the servers have started cannibalizing each other.
The good servers feed off the medicore ones leaving behind a bare skeleton of what was. There’s no incentive to stick to crappy servers outside of some form of loyalty. The points-per-tick system makes coverage the all-decisive measure of success.
WvW population is also down this week simply because farming Lion’s Arch is so kitten lucrative.
WvW population will also take another dip when Elder Scrolls Online launches in 6 weeks time. But that’s nothing you can stop.
So yeah, it’s going to be a rough WvW for the coming weeks and I don’t see much change ahead.
I’ve had the “pleasure” of fighting you guys a few times over the past weeks.
I’m not gonna lie, you’re super annoying.
Most players hate Thieves too and go out of their way to kill them, even if it means hunting them down for 10 minutes.
I don’t actually think you achieve that much or are all that effective in what you do, but again, you are very annoying and I guess that’s worth something.
Skyhammer is a fun map. It has unique mechanics that give it a completely different feel from your standard map.
Yeah, that feeling is rage and frustration.
Seems ok, but you probably don’t want Critical Haste. It screw up your timings and procs when you don’t need it. It’s really better for Sword mainhand and even there it ain’t that great.
I’d also always take Shadowstep with me. Probably the best Thief skill in game.
It’s hardly underrated, but I agree it’s borderline overpowered.
I mean it’s practically melee impunity that requires accurate positioning, fast attacks or shadowsteps + burst to work around. Considering it’s spamable that makes it very, very potent.
I mean simply the fact that even in PvE it allows us to kill many mobs without even taking damage should be a clear indicator that something is broken.
But it’s a difficult skill to nerf, assuming you’d want to, since it’s so key to the D/P play-style and a big part of what makes S/P so powerful in PvE. Reducing the Blind frequency would just make it feel random and impotent, sometimes working, sometimes not. Nobody likes skills like that.
I don’t really care for the minor buffs and nerfs here and there.Disabling Shot is probably going to be most noticeable.
Improvisation will be nice, no doubt, possibly even OP. We’ll have to wait and see.
But what really annoys me is that REAL Thief problems like:
- Last Refuge
- lack of condition removal outside of Shadow’s Embrace.
- little/no sustain outside of Shadow Arts and evade-spam.
- huge amounts of utility piled into stealth.
- etc.
Are still ignored. Like not even acknowledged…..just completely ignored as if ANet had NO IDEA they are even a problem.
You know why nobody could predict these changes? Because they make no sense. They are completely random and don’t follow any logic or feedback.
You could try running a non-SA build and you’ll see that almost all your issues are resolved…
So wait, I have the ability to remove all types of conditions outside of stealth?
I have access to frequent Blinds as a trait, outside of stealth?
I have a massively increased run-speed outside of stealth?
I have substantial passive healing outside of stealth (lol @ Assassin’s Reward)?
Because if I do, do tell because I’ve clearly been missing out.
If you’re a Power build it’s actually quite a strong ability.
- It reflects projectiles so ideally use it just when the Warrior switches to Longbow.
- It’s free damage so a good way to replenish your Initiative. Use when low.
- It’s good AoE pressure. When the Warrior is trying to revive his mate, say hi.
If you’re a condition build then it’s only really good for the projectile reflect. Still better than nothing.