Tequatl has been killed numerous times on most servers.
However it’s typically too challenging for pure PuGs so it really only gets killed in scheduled events organized by guilds or other server entities. There are even entire guilds set up to do this type of fight (soon the Wurm too).
Guesting may be a good way to see this fight done in a proper fashion. Often servers will advertise a serious attempt cross-server so that people can join them for the try. Often they’ll even opt to try it on an overflow so you don’t even need to guest.
It’s all just about finding out when the next serious attempt is and getting there in time.
Individuals are nice, servers are not.
You can have a positive experience on any server if you meet the right people.
While in general I think it’s ok that not every skill is equally useful in every environment I do question the legitimacy of Moa.
In PvE, as you pointed out, it’s nigh useless due to various limitations.
In PvP on the other hand, it’s as close to an “iWin” button as we have in this game.
That’s a huge discrepancy for a single skill to have, especially an ultimate ability. Time Warp is far better for example, being extremely useful in PvE and still somewhat useful in PvP.
I think it would be best, long term, if Moa was replaced with a more generally useful skill. But then again, Mesmers in general have far better ultimates than most other classes.
Hold on, medium armor actually looks good now?
Thieves are good, but only at one thing. And that’s roaming + burst support.
And the thing is, to be effective at this not only requires good skill and situational awareness, it also isn’t a role you need to fill with more than one character.
Having one good Thief is great, but anything more is a liability in SoloQ.
Unfortunately I have made the same observations.
Guardians, Necros and Warriors increase a teams chances of winning, multiple Thieves, Mesmers or Elementaliss lower the chances.
I made a similar thread here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Rare-Veggie-Pizza/page/2#post3485009
Point being, having 40% Condition duration from food makes NO sense given the way they budget items and traits. It’s like giving Power buidls the equivalent of 40% Crit-Damage or 400 Power.
I find it unfathomable why ANet hasn’t nerfed this food yet as it’s a big contributer to the “Conditions are OP” QQ.
WvW
Top:
- Zerg clashes – they are dynamic, involve some tactics and a wide range of skills.
- Siege battles – but only if people are defending.
- Casual appeal – fun and rewarding for everyone
Flop:
- Downed-State/Rally mechanic – unfun snowballing mechanic that slows down game-play and helps bigger zergs.
- Tiny maps – Too small for meaningful strategies. A single zerg can easily cover an entire map.
- Scoring system – Points per tick is a really unfair scoring system for so many reasons. Scores need to scale with current player activity.
Yeah, this build is pretty broken and there’s no real counter to it.
I’m not sure Singet of Spite per se is overpowered but it is in conjunction with general condition spam and Fear/Terror. It’s practically a full condition dump and an iWin button unless the victim has Lyssa Runes or other full condition clears available.
The +40% Condition duration food just further exasperates the issue.
They could give the skill a longer cast-time and make it more obvious and easy to avoid without nerfing the effects directly. I’d still rather see less condition spam in general which then would make Signet of Spite less of an issue.
The buff-food is the main offender. Until it’s removed/rebalanced we can’t objectively kitten Dire gear.
40% Condition duration is the equivalent of +400 Power or +40% Crit-Damage in terms of item budget. But we have neither.
Sigil of Blood may be an interesting option after the March update that allows you to use two “on procc” sigils. For now though, Sigil of Fire offers more DPS that also scales better with gear.
Don’t touch Healing Power as a Thief. It’s a nigh useless stats if you’re only healing yourself and scales very poorly.
If you’re doing Power damage, then Power must always be your primary stat. Power is by far and large the best DPS stat out there. Never sacrifice Power for any other stat. So any Crit-build you make is always going to have Power come first as a primary stat.
As for the rest, it’s about finding a balance that works for you.
I feel comfortable in PvE with about 15.000 HP. Less and I feel too squishy, more and it feels a bit unnecessary. It also depends on exactly how well you dodge etc. but 15.000 HP feels quite comfortable.
Same applies to Toughness. Get as much as you need without sacrificing Power.
Precision always feels a bit overrated imo, especially considering how much effective Crit-chance you can get from traits and Fury. I think 50% basic Crit-chance is good enough for any build but that’s not based on any objective data.
Crit-Damage follows the same logic and may not be a priority with the incoming changes. Get as much as you can.
All other stats are practically irrelevant to Thieves.
His reasoning explains a lot of ANet game-design decisions.
Aka…they really don’t get it.
In Jons world a passive ability needs to be more effective than an active one because it would otherwise be unviable.
Well at least the active skill can be interrupted and has a generally higher risk/reward attached to its use. But the devs don’t seem to “get it”.
So I queued up for a tournament a few minutes ago and jumped into a hotjoin to cover some of the daily caps.
While playing I got a whisper to join the god kitten ed tournament game already because they were 4 vs 5.
But I never received an invite. Even after relogging I never was invited to the game and so I assume they had a 4 vs. 5 game.
This hasn’t really happened before so I assume this has something to do with the new patch. Did queues somehow get bugged?
Edit: Now when I queue I even get a Network Error Code=1033:53:5:1314:101
It would be nice if the timer expired when you logged out though.
It seems odd logging in the next day and still have the 30 minute debuff on you.
Personally I’m an advocate of 15/30/10/15/0.
That gives you AoE Weakness on Choking Gas, Condition cleanse or Initiative regen or Blinds on Stealth from Shadow Arts and the extra dodges from Feline Grace in Acrobatics.
Overall well rounded with strong DPS and survivability. Works well with Berserker gear too.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Power is better in sPvP in almost every way. In fact I’d say Condition damage is practically non-viable for Thieves in sPvP.
But that’s partially due to the fact that as a roamer, burst is a big part of your asset. A roamer without burst is about as useful as a glass-cannon point-holder.
Things are different in WvW however where you have more room to ream, more targets to pick and an easier time stacking various conditions.
While I don’t use it I wouldn’t mind seeing Celestial stats seeing an overall boost. It’s my understanding that the lack of Power is what’s really holding it back.
So even a subtle increase from 47 to 50 or so would go a long way.
Funny, after 2000 hours on my Thief none of that has ever happened to me.
The only thing close is having to relogg a different character when you find yourself with 2-3 Thieves on your tPvP team.
But that’s not really anyone’s fault. I just wish the match-making would take class into account and not stack 3 of the same into one team.
I support any notion to buff the minimum HP classes (Guardian, Thief, Elementalist) to a more respectable level. Say 12.000 or so instead of 10.800 HP.
But that would obviously have to come at the cost of a little mitigation, which can be a little op on some bunker builds.
Ok so if we don’t care about Living Story we can just /afk for the next 6 weeks?
I’ve seen this before, over a year ago.
Well the nice thing about Champion Trains is that you can join and leave them whenever it suits you. Unlike dungeons you’re not making a 30 minute commitment.
I agree that the loot isn’t as good as their popularity implies. On the other hand they do reward a nice balance of loot + Karma and occasional skill-points, T6 materials and money.
Yep, one of the first lessons you need to learn as a PvE Thief (applies to every class really) is that it’s your duty to carry all weapon-sets with you.
In PvE you play a class, not a weapon set. Instead you use whatever is practical in that given situation.
As as the guys above pointed out, in most dungeons, S/P is just the superior weapon-set.
D/D has one niche, and that’s single-target melee damage. And that’s a pretty small niche in most situations as well as a dangerous one more often than not.
Thiefs can condi cleans very quickly.
No they can’t. They can cleanse consistently, yes, but not quickly (unless they use their heal or Lyssa Runes). Thieves get wrecked by condition bombing just as much as everybody else.
Even if a Thief puts down a Shadow Refuge he’s only removing one condition every 3 seconds. And that means he can’t actually be fighting anyone.
I’ll admit though that a small number of conditions (2-4) don’t really pose much of a threat to Thieves.
it has a pretty long cast time. dodge it
Thanks for the standard response to any glaring imbalance.
Not really,
the problem is we rely on glassy gear to deal anything resembling respectable damage. Unlike Warriors we can just run up to people and continuously bash their face, even in soldier gear.
I won’t pretend I’ve tied everything but imo you can’t be both durable and still deal respectable damage as a Thief. It’s one or the other.
But even my level 50 Warrior in Zerker gear is more durable than my level 80 Valkyrie Thief in a Zerg fight.
It’s the nature of stealth + burst.
It’s the same reason the Assassin archetype has been despised by so many in EVERY other MMO. ANet just made it worse by giving Thieves so much in combat stealth as well.
The reason people hate Thieves is because they might we wandering around, minding their own business when BAM, they instantly lose 50% of their health. This causes many less experienced players to panic and stresses them out. They make mistakes and then die quickly to another round of Backstab burst.
I get why that’s frustrating. I don’t blame people for expressing that.
I blame ANet for creating the worst, most unfair and exploitable stealth mechanic in any MMO I’ve played. In no other MMO was stealth ever such a cause for frustration both for the user and the receiver.
I think the keyword here is “less experienced players”.
Yes but you can’t design a mechanic around the notion that everyone dealing with it is a pro player.
ANet dropped the ball here. Even Revealed was merely an afterthought.
Instead of making Stealth a Thief’s defensive tool they made it the Thief’s universal tool for everything from setting up damage, over healing , blinding and condition cleansing.
It does too much and is yet too essential for Thief survival for them to play without.
They really need to nerf +40%/-40% Condition duration food and reduce the ability to stack various different types of Conditions.
But the upcoming change to Sigils is just going to exasperate the issue rather than mitigate it.
Combine that with the changes to Crit-Damage and it’s just going to get worse.
Thieves really need some of their traits reworked in light of condition spam. Fleet Foot for example should remove one of all types of Conditions on dodge, not just Cripple and Weakness
Btw. I feel the need to point out that the situation will only get worse with the Sigil change. 100% chance to proc combined with being able to stack another condition-applying Sigil in your off-hand weapon means players can expect most condition-spammers to apply yet another type of condition.
It’s the nature of stealth + burst.
It’s the same reason the Assassin archetype has been despised by so many in EVERY other MMO. ANet just made it worse by giving Thieves so much in combat stealth as well.
The reason people hate Thieves is because they might we wandering around, minding their own business when BAM, they instantly lose 50% of their health. This causes many less experienced players to panic and stresses them out. They make mistakes and then die quickly to another round of Backstab burst.
I get why that’s frustrating. I don’t blame people for expressing that.
I blame ANet for creating the worst, most unfair and exploitable stealth mechanic in any MMO I’ve played. In no other MMO was stealth ever such a cause for frustration both for the user and the receiver.
While it’s probably ok to wait out the changes I do think it stands to reason that Divinity Runes will in fact simply add +10 Ferocity unless they buff the entire Rune set. But even then we might see +15 to all stats which would make it barely +1% Crit-Damage.
So people who stack Divinity Runes, Orbs etc. for Crit-Damage will definitely notice the nerf. I don’t think it will affect the popularity of Traveler Runes much though since the +25% speed is their man appeal.
Yes, this happens in quite a lot of areas. It’s like a lot of consecutive fall-damages despite barely dropping a yard.
Thieves can be countered by Shadowsteps too, just saying.
But anyways, I agree that the different downed-states are annoying.
Given the right class and abilities, every class should be stompabale with the first try.
If the D/P guy is semi competent and you’re not surrounded by countless mobs, D/D doesn’t have a chance.
Black Powder basically makes using Cloak and Dagger impossible unless he somehow screws up. But in general D/P is a pretty hard-counter to and any build that relies on Cloak and Dagger.
However there is one way to penetrate the Blind field but it requires impeccable timing. It takes about half a second for the first Blind to be applied so if you time it well you can Mug + Backstab almost instantly from range.
You have to hope it’s enough to kill him or you’ll have to find targets other targets to cloak off of.
But yeah, there’s a reason everyone uses D/P even after the slight buff D/D received on December 10th.
I do honestly wonder what feedback they base these types of changes on.
Because it’s clearly not based on community feedback.
In fact, more often than not, ANet does the exact opposite of what community feedback demands. The more I hear about their balance plans the more I get the impression that their entire balance ideas come from a handful of guys in the office and are based on their personal experience instead of that of thousands of players.
Anet just baffles me to no end.
The Rating system is just broken, forget it even exists.
1500 fighting during peak hours matters less than having 50 vs. 20 players on at night.
Downed-state and the associated Rally mechanic are terrible in every PvP scenario.
We have established this in countless threads but ANet just doesn’t seem to care about it at all.
Anyway, what they do seem to care about though is casual players and “playing together”.
So here’s a reason why the Rally system needs a rework.
When things get rough in our random WvW zerg, people look for things to blame. And the first and most obvious target are upleveled characters because they die faster than average level 80s and thus serve as rally-bots for the enemy.
The zerg then tends to vent its frustration at these up-leveled players, be it fair or not.
I.e. the rally mechanic discourages people to play together and incites hostility and frustration at your fellow players who might not have built for max. WvW efficiency.
So there you are ANet. I know you don’t care much for well reasoned thoughts and arguments about the detrimental effect of downed-state/rally but I know you care about casuals who love spending money on the cash-shop and about playing together.
So maybe now you can get around to actually addressing this god-awful mechanic.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
We are currently playing Baruch Bay, as Spanish server. Their zergs are rubbish, they are uncoordinated and just generally terrible at WvW.
But the Spanish have an incredibly popular night-shift. I’m talking 60 man zergs at 3AM during the week. You can’t complete with that. So they win every match-up and are even Tier 1, despite being absolutely terrible in combat.
The problem with night-capping isn’t that servers have different peak hours.
It’s the effect it has on the points-per-tick system.
Compare the two time-slots:
6PM to 2AM
Server A has full coverage of 500 players
Server B has decent coverage of about 400 players
Server C is struggling and only musters up 300 players during those hours.
In total we have 1200 people fighting. Due to the higher coverage, Server A dominates that time slots and averages a 300 PPT. Server B can still maintain a 250 PPT and Server C can still hold on to 150 PPT.
This is a reflection of how population affects performance during peak hours.
Now at 2AM most players go to bed and what remains is a night crew.
Night lasts from 2AM to roughly 8AM.
Server A has a night crew of 20
Server B has a night crew of 15
Server C has a night crew of 50 due to cultural differences or some other happen-stances.
Both Server A and B will have NOTHING to counter that zerg, meaning Server C gets to cap practically everything. Servers A and B lose all the upgrades they worked for and Server C gets to PvD to victory.
In the end Server C ticks for 500 PPT for the entire night while Server A and B barely hold more than a handful of towers and camps, each worth 100 PPT.
So at the end of this phase, Server C comes out ahead. But not because of its actual performance, not because of what their 300 people fought for during peak hours. It’s the fact that they have 30 more people when it counts (at night) and can PvD faster and more efficiently than anyone else that carries them to victory.
This is why the system sucks.
Points per tick is a terrible scoring system for a 24h game-mode.
The score needs to scale with the amount of players active in WvW. The more players are active, the higher the ticks are valued. That’s the only reasonable solution to this problem.
Ideally score-tick would occur faster, the more players are active in WvW and slow down with less and less participation.
So while 1500 players are bashing each other’s face in we tick once every 10 minutes.
When 100 players are bashing each other’s face in we tick once every 30 minutes.
Seems reasonable and fair for everyone.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
They should just bump up the overall stats on Celestial gear to compensate.
More than anything it was the lack of Power that was holding the gear-set back.
Apparently roughly 14 Ferocity will = 1% Crit-Damage. But I have no source.
So +72 stats should equal 5.1% Crit-Damage which would change nothing.
But +24 stats would only equal 1.71% Crit-Damage which would be a nerf.
And since we have quite a few more +24 items than others, this should result in a noticeable drop in Crit-Damage.
Most affected are going to be Runes and Orbs though.
Whereas Runes of the Traveler and Divinity used to grant +2% Crit damage (ergo, roughly 28 Ferocity) they will now barely grant 1% Crit-Damage.
Ok so Power/Burst builds are getting an indirect nerf due to the Ferocity changes. I get that. Time to kill was always rather low in GW2 with burst builds. I wouldn’t have considered this a big problem, but ok.
However what has been universally considered a problem is the dominance of condition builds in WvW and sPvP. Not specifically the power of an individual condition but the power to stack so many of them, constantly is breaking the game.
I want to know if, in light of recent changes, anything is being undertaken to change anything about condition considering…
- So many Condition are applied via AoE.
- Conditions can get +40% Duration from Food alone (WTF!!11)
- Conditions are often applied passively.
- Conditions are commonly applied by untelegraphed attacks and are generally hard to avoid.
- Conditions are both crowd-control and damage.
- Players are forced to stack massive Condition counters just so as not to instantly melt away once the AoE Condition spam commences (this includes -40% Duration).
- It’s become so easy to stack various Conditions of different types.
So yeah, Condition are an ACTUAL problem in GW2. But are we going to have to wait another 6 months before anything is undertaken?
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Guardian.
Albeit all classes have the potential for support (some more than others).
Well all on Crit-Damage Sigils will be bumped up to 100% chance to procc once their internal cooldown expires. So they will procc for more reliably.
A while back someone calculated that Sigil of Fire was a 7% DPS increase on a Zerker build…..on single targets. It’s probably much more if you account for the AoE.
The problem of Berserker dominance was never one of stats. It was one of game design.
When 90% of PvE damage is avoidable and instant-gibs, then it’s no surprise that players opt for the only edge that matters in such a scenario. And that’s damage.
They must have some strong Warrior lobbyism going in their office.
Because 8% is about as half- kitten d a nerf you could even sell as one.
And of all the good ways they could have changed it, adding new conditionals or making it scale differently at various health-levels, they went with the most generic.
This won’t change anything about the meta game.
This change was never intended to fix the “Berserker meta”. Other changes will do that.
This change was just about future-proofing Critical-Damage so that it works better with upcoming new content and possible level-cap increases.
The on kill sigils stack, but not on crit.
So I’ll be stacking both +250 Power and +250 Precision with my Shortbow?
Doesn’t sound balanced.
I don’t think it was done for any balance reason per se.
The obvious reason to change the way Critical-Damage works is because of scalability.
For future content, new levels and new gear you can’t have fixed % on gear. You need abstract numbers that are easier to scale.
WoW had the same problem in vanilla when their crit-chance was based on fixed-%. Obviously this doesn’t work well when you want to maintain the relative power of characters while still making them chase upgrades.
I’m not sure why ANet didn’t learn that from WoW in the first place.
Either way, the 10% nerf is probably just an attempt to reduce burst-damage that can be a tad excessive in this game. But it’s not the reason they changed the scaling of Crit-Damage.
If there is any indication then that they are future-proofing GW2 for future level-increases. So there you have it, we might yet see a new expansion.
I just feel the need to point out that he did not fight any D/P Thieves who would have made things really difficult with constant Blind-spam.