There are 3 things that make Shortbow such an attractive side-arm. And considering the alternatives it’s hardly surprising that it’s popular.
- 1. It’s a ranged weapon: In many cases having a ranged weapon is essential. Not because it’s powerful or cool, just because it’s ranged.
- 2. One of the few AoE weapons. When it comes to real AoE, Thieves don’t have many options outside of the Shortbow. And AoE is incredibly important in GW2.
- 3. Infiltrator’s Arrow: It’s just a great (albeit buggy) ability that makes things feel faster, even if you’re not. It also allows for some great shortcuts.
Shortbow isn’t OP and never was. It just does some things that Thieves wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, like really essential stuff (AoE, ranged damage).
If Thieves had more options or if P/P was less kittenty then maybe Shortbow would be a less dominant side-arm. But until then it will continue to remain the most popular side-arm by far, because playing without AoE, without a ranged weapon, puts you at a real disadvantage.
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.
Runes of Strength are also a viable option if you can maintain at least 1 Might at all times. But yeah, Scholar synergizes well with Berserker gear since little HP typically means you spend more time fully healed.
Yeah I’ve been pondering this issue too but there’s no obvious or easy answer in sight.
I don’t think the upcoming nerf to Crit-damage will change much about that either. I mean it will be significant but I have no doubt that Berserker gear will still be the best DPS gear by far and the appeal of it won’t change much until PvE encounters are reworked.
I went ahead and crafted Ascended Berserker gear since my main-set was still Valkyrie.
As I see it:
For PvE the appeal of Berserker gear won’t change much. DPS will still matter more than anything else and encounters will still be just as easy in full Berserker gear as they are in tankier setups.
For WvW it’s harder to predict as new builds may evolve. One could argue that due to the Crit-Damage nerf we’re less likely to get bursted down, hence we should stack more damage (Pro Berserker) or you could argue that fights will last longer and thus survivability will matter more (Pro Valkyrie/Soldier). Both make sense in their own way and we’ll have to wait and see.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
For PvE Sword/Pistol is best in 90% of situations.
In WvW either Dagger/Pistol or Dagger/Dagger rule supreme thanks to frequent access to stealth.
Every class has at least one, sometimes two skill-sets that are either completely useless or very, very niche.
Mesmers have Mantras and Thieves have Venoms and Traps.
There’s nothing to salvage about this map unless you straight-up remove the Skyhammer gun.
I’d rather play Raid on the Capricon instead of this abomination any day.
how can u say that any class in this game is hard? -_-
Because many come from a LoL/DotA background where managing 4 skills is hard. Not everyone is used to WoW generation games with managing 50 skills.
-snip-
But the number of skills does matter. It gives each situation far more potential maneuvers and outcomes.
WoW had a number of very reputable players that were quite a bit ahead of everyone else and could consistently outperform everyone else.
In Guild Wars 2 anyone who can reliably hit people with Cloak and Dagger has essentially “mastered” the Thief class. That’s not to say that it doesn’t take skill. But it means that “mastering” the mechanics of a class takes far less effort in GW2 than any other MMO.
90% of skill in Guild Wars 2 is derived from situational awareness. Class mastery is a fairly minor aspect. That’s why if you’re good on a Mesmer or Guardian you will quickly be able to perform well on a Thief or Ranger.
Unlike WoW, mastering a class in GW2 is a matter of hours, not weeks because most of your PvP skill is independent of the class you’re playing.
Yeah Axe + Shield + Greatsword + Berserker gear + Hambow traits is pretty vicious.
I think I fought such a Warrior for like 5 minutes once until I found a gap to burst him down. But really it was pure luck and could have gone either way.
Greatsword allows them to kite any potential burst damage they might face and with all the passive healing constantly ticking away. Shortbow is a waste of time since the auto-attack does less damage than the Warrior heals per second.
And then there’s the 11k Eviscerates you have to watch out for, preferably setup with a Shield Bash.
I don’t see how anything but D/P would prevail against them (expect P/D maybe).
Hold your horses.
Karma is still abundant and you don’t actually NEED that much of it. I don’t see why people are complaining.
Yes, Karma was nerfed. You stopped getting it for failed events and they nerfed the liquid Karma jugs you got from loot and daily/monthly rewards.
You still get the same amount of Karma, more if you account for the account-wide buffs, by participating in Events. And that’s where the Lion share of Karma comes from.
how can u say that any class in this game is hard? -_-
Because many come from a LoL/DotA background where managing 4 skills is hard. Not everyone is used to WoW generation games with managing 50 skills.
A revised scoring system that scales the points-per-tick with the current player activity.
Minimum HP needs to be buffed really. 10800 HP isn’t a valid starting point in any scenario.
I think that might actually buff Thieves as it would allow them to get 3 utilities. Most Thief elites are rather bad anyway, so it wouldn’t be much of a loss.
Unfortunately this is the way stories are told in MMOs.
I never really got the obsession with lore and plot in MMOs. MMOs are by nature, the worst games for telling a story because nothing can truly have consequence. The game is far too restricted in what it can do.
Living World is already pretty ambitious in this regard but still cannot overcome the problems that come with telling a story in an MMO.
@Imbune
Actually Mark Jacobs is trying to do just that. He can’t buy back the rights to DAoC (it still belongs to EA) but last year he started a kickstarter campaign to get his own WvW game underway. WAR wasn’t really his pet-project either as it had many other parties involved (Games Workshop, EA, Mythic) and completely different ambitions (kill WoW with PvP).
You should google “camelot unchained” when you have a moment and read up on it yourself. It’s not going to be a carbon copy of DAoC but share the same spirit.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
I can sort-of see the point.
After getting all the achievements I think it will get old really, really fast.
It will either turn into another massive farm-fest like Queens gauntlet or be abandoned by the end of the week.
It would be nice if the events actually required a little coordination or if there was something worth working towards. But excluding the achievements, it all seems to be about loot.
I’ve tried multiple times, I’ve made sure to kill mobs, I’ve ensured that he gets through, but it seems like nothing I do will earn me credit for this event.
And I’m not the only one. It seems every time Commander Lawson comes up a bunch of people aren’t getting credit for it.
It’s annoying to have this one try every hour and not have it work.
So without a pass I can’t access the activities? That seems daft.
Officially all MMO terms of service disallow account sharing in all forms.
However it’s practically impossible to detect if it’s within the same house-hold so that’s not really an issue. But in your case, where you both live apart, you can’t really do that.
I’d recommend you both buy unique copies of the game. Account sharing is tedious and you won’t be able to play together, let alone other potential issues along the way. I can complain a lot about this game but I can’t deny it has excellent value for money. So there’s really no way the 40$ you’ll pay for it won’t pay off.
With the changes to Lion’s Arch I can’t seem to locate a way to access the daily activities (Crab Toss, Keg Brawl etc.).
Where were these NPCs relocated to?
This is one of the reasons I never play minion/AI classes in MMOs. They are just terrible and annoying, besides promoting passive play and attracting the worst and laziest of players.
I’ve seen multiple wipes first hand, caused by Bearbow Rangers who couldn’t control their pets.
I made the mistake of creating a Mesmer and while the class is fundamentally fun, the constantly bugging Warden and the dumb and random Illusion AI really want to make be smash something at times.
Ascended Rings take up so much bank space already getting them doesn’t even feel like a reward.
And in the off-chance you may even get an Ascended Weapon drop it probably won’t be your stat-combo.
You read it here first. 450 Mio. people have been spoken for!
unless u face a good team as pug and they roflstomp u and farm u on exit to prevent u from getting at least some points to get the reward.
I play TeamQ every day and things aren’t that bad. I join solo all the time and have about a 50/50 win/lose rate. While I do occasionally lose to premades it’s never as bad as getting farmed from spawn. And often premades aren’t that much better than a good pug either.
I do however try to avoid premades by not queuing during prime-time.
I don’t really think this is a problem.
- The premades get to farm easy points against Pugs.
- Pugs get to avoid the cancer called Skyhammer and have to deal with less 5 vs. 4.
- Everyone gets better rewards.
It’s a win/win for everyone involved.
I agree that the added content is lacking some real depth.
The Living Story stuff is nice and all, but ultimately superficial. The 4 core pillars of every-day GW2 game-play are still.
- Dungeons (incl. Fractals)
- PvE boss events
- sPvP
- WvW
And very little has truly changes about that.
Even when there are changes made, these changes often don’t account for much in the long-term. Look at WvW for example. It really isn’t much better now than it was at release.
Karma is still the best way to get them. You get Karma for so many things, it’s hard to ever run out.
Just guest to a server with an open temple of Balthazaar and start clicking.
Nothing in the game is better because of Ascended gear.
If however if was acquired by overcoming new challenges (like 10 man raids), then yes, I’d actually like it.
The problem with loot is that it’s so abundant that anything less than a rare item feels like trash.
Rares are ok, but only because of their Ectoplasms.
Exotics, at least the ones that drop, are nice, but not truly special or interesting. Most random Exotics aren’t even worth 2 Gold.
But then the truly rare drops like Precursors are suddenly worth more than everything else you have ever collected, combined. It’s so extreme, there’s no middle ground.
This has been pointed out over and over again over the past year.
Aside from the free deaths the buff is pointless.
I want Hard to Catch to grant us 3 seconds of Stability after being hit by a control effect. (60 seconds cooldown).
This has been complained about since before beta. The particle effects in this game, especially with zergs, are just way over the top.
At times when you’re part of a temple run in PvE you can’t even see the boss under all the effect spam, let alone dodge any of his abilities.
EotM just proves that ANet is obsessed with gimmicky mechanics. It’s nice to see them experiment with different ideas and concepts and I welcome having a general overflow system in place for WvW.
But the core WvW experience hasn’t improved. Instead it’s gotten worse.
This is mirrored somewhat in sPvP, where Forefire and Niflhel are clearly the best maps. They have the best game-experience and the least influential gimmicky crap. They also happen to be two original maps.
Looking at what followed that, Temple (good), Spirit Watch (o.k.) and Skyhammer (oh my god why…why….?) you can clearly see a trend.
There is a certain quality to simplicity, especially when it comes to PvP. And that quality is something ANet seems to be lacking more and more.
Combo Fields are just too weak in general and simply don’t last long enough.
The only relevant ones are fire-fields and water-fields because the Might stacks actually last long enough for the initial clash to take place and the healing is just nice.
Other than that though, they’re pretty meaningless. Retaliation from combo-fields barely lasts more than a few seconds and is expired before a zerg can even clash.
Another problem is that both Conditions and Boons are way too abundant. Condition-applying combo-fields are useless because everyone is already throwing around Condition left and right.
Yeah, it’s that simple. In a game-mode about holding hotly contested points, it helps if you can….well hold a point.
GW2 has so much random, untelegraphed and untargeted damage flying around that it’s often impossible for a burst-class to contribute effectively in team-fights. Instead they have to circle the outsides of the node and take pot-shots at targets.
You don’t really need to be able to kill people in Conquest, holding them off until your team respawns is often more effective and you can simply kill the via attrition.
This is why PvP in GW2 is the least fun I’ve had in an MMO. And I generally like PvP.
Quite soon actually.
I imagine this is why they pushed through the Ferocity changes, to address any potential scaling issues.
Well, even crossing an entire Borderlands map takes less than 3 minutes but the point remains.
Longevity is far more valuable and far more important than in sPvP. And Shadow Arts gives you that longevity thanks to passive heals and condition removal. It’s not by chance that almost every popular WvW build speccs 30 points into Shadow Arts.
It really is a complete random guess what ANet pulls out of their hat next. I trust them to literally do anything.
Their actions make no sense, have no connection to actual game-play and generally aren’t based on player feedback or suggestions.
You could role a pair of dice and perform a rain-dance and make an equally accurate prediction as someone who writes a detailed, in-depth analysis of the class.
Yeah, no one said it’s a bad trait per se. It’s just sooooooooooooooooo frustrating when you die constantly because of it.
Incoming damage is unpredictable and you cannot possibly account for when Last Refuge will procc.
I know ANet acknowledged it as problematic, but it’s been “problematic” for a year now and nothing has changed. And we all know how cheap talk is at ANet.
Yup, same here.
Skyhammer single-handedly drove me away from SoloQ. Quite an achievement really.
There’s also less 4 vs. 5 in teamQ too, which is nice.
But seeing ANet’s reluctance to do anything about this is probably what hurts most.
so when will the changes take place?
When they fix Last Refuge (aka. never).
It’s been well over a year now that this trait has been labeled “broken” by the Thief community.
Feedback about it has been consistent and regular. It is the single biggest source of frustration when playing a Thief and after rage-quitting my play session tonight just because of it I’ve just about had it.
How can such a simple fix be ignored for so long?
Any other MMO developer I have ever given money to would have fixed a class-killing, problematic trait like Last Refuge 2 months after it being reported, tops. And yet here we are, after countless rounds of buffs and nerfs to who knows what that effectively changes nothing but NO CAN GET ROUND TO FIXING THIS BULLkitten TRAIT?
Really?
kittenmit guys. You’re costing me what little hair I have left on my head.
It was way better when Shortbow still had 1200 range.
Shortbow never had 1200 range. Cluster Bomb did.
When evaluating these two skills I was always convinced Furious Retaliation was superior in most scenarios, especially when solo roaming.
After all it provides Fury, which is a 20% increase in Critical-Strike chance, it works from all directions and doesn’t overlap with Hidden Killer. In fact is has quite a positive synergy in that it only triggers when you’d typically start using Heartseeker over Backstab, which is exactly when you’d want Fury.
However there are also downsides.
- It only lasts for 10 seconds and I’ not sure what the internal cooldown is.
- It can overlap with other sources of Fury, which might not happen much when solo-roaming but does occasionally in team-fights.
- It can trigger unintentionally at times when you accidentally target a pet or a Phantasm or simply another target that you’re not currently pursuing.
- Side Strike on the other hand has negative synergy with Hidden Killer as they partially overlap.
- It also doesn’t work on frontal attacks, which happen quite often when fighting Warriors with D/P.
- But then again it doesn’t have any of the downsides mentioned above.
So what is your take on Furious Retaliation vs. Side Strike?
So if automated response is so good with the meta, how come we don’t see more engineers? I mean it is the least played class , so something must be up.
Because contrary to popular belief people don’t play what’s OP, they play what they enjoy.
Lyssa for the Condition removal, Ogre for DPS.
I agree that D/P is slightly overpowered. Or maybe it’s just well-designed since it’s the only weapon-set that makes frequent use of all its skills.
Then again it allows us to do some amazing things, like go toe-to-toe with Warriors and other heavy brawlers. But yes, I agree that it’s a little easy countering classes who don’t know how to avoid Black Powder. I even have difficulties on my Warrior despite knowing Thief mechanics inside out.
However D/P still has weaknesses. You can still be instant-gibbed by D/D Thieves even inside a Black Powder and Initiative becomes something you have to keep an eye on.
It would be nice if other Thief weapon sets had equally well-designed weapon-skills.
I agree that D/D has the more attractive play-style but it evolves almost entirely around 2 skills. Same applies to P/D.
If D/D and P/D actually used all 5 of their weapon skills on a regular basis they’d be much more compelling to play.
The whole Ascended gear is just so poorly conceived from front to end. It makes no sense. Nothing in the game is better or more rewarding because of Ascended gear. It just pigenholes you character into a single build and play-style while asking you to grind ridiculous amounts of material only so a certain abundant material can have some economical value.
It’s like how “luck” was supposed to make greens and blues more appreciated and curb inflation. Yet all it does is create more and once people have 300 Magic Find, then what?
Just like with all the new currencies ANet introduced, none of them have a long-term plan. Everything is add-hoc and never thought through to the end.
ANet has brilliant artists and animators,
They have competent programmers,
They have a fairly management,
but in terms of game-design, they don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing.
Guild Wars 2 has always had a slight input lag.
Some of this is probably due to the aftercast on some abilities. But mostly I blamed my WLAN, despite low pings.
However recently this issue has gotten more pronounced.
Quite frequently now the game will not respond to button presses and not trigger the ability as intended. Other times the game will register it twice due to micro-lag.
This is especially irritating on a Thief where this can result in double ability usage that can often get you killed. I’ve considered my keyboard but don’t have comparable issues with any other games so it must really be GW2.
Sometimes I think addeding a short 0.5 second global cooldown might actually help alleviate the issue.