Guild Wars 2

Let me preface this by saying that in my personal opinion the downed-state mechanic is the single most detrimental feature to PvP in any MMO I have seen to date. It has a snowballing effect, isn’t remotely balanced and most importantly isn’t fun. I my book it always was and still is a mechanic designed and balanced entirely around PvE, where to be fair, it’s perfectly fine.

That said I acknowledge that ANet is never going to fundamentally change this mechanic no matter how much I or anyone else complains about it. But maybe there are a few reasonable changes we can all agree on.

1. 1 Rally for 1 kill – This is pretty self-explanatory. I’m ok with the Rallying mechanic and understand arguments about it shifting the momentum of battle and keeping things interesting. And in 90% if situations that’s fine. But having multiple people, sometimes up to 5 or more people rally off a single person they tagged half a minute prior is just not cool and very frustrating and random when it occurs. And this happens quite a bit in WvW.

To use an example, when you catch a ball in Dodgeball you get one team-member to rejoin the game. Having your entire team rejoin because of a single catch would just be kittened and have a massive unpredictable jojo-effect on the outcome of matches.

2. Every finisher-interrupt should have a counter.

Many classes in GW2 can be reliably stomped given the right abilities.

Warrior interrupt can be countered by Stability, Stealth and Blind.
Guardian interrupt can be countered by Stability and Blind.
Ranger interrupt can be countered by Stability and Blind
Thief teleport can be countered by Shadowsteps/Blinks. His second interrupt can not be countered.
Engineer interrupt can be countered by Stability, Stealth and Blind
Necromancer interrupt can be countered by Stealth.
Mesmer interrupt can not be countered.
Elementalist can not be countered. Also being near a portal makes them virtually unkillable.

So the two big outliners here are Mesmers and Elementalists. The Thief downed stealth is also problematic but at least it has a lengthy cooldown and so isn’t available right away.

My goal here is to allow every “stomp denier” to be countered by some sort of ability. This ability doesn’t have to be available to all classes but there should always be ways to reliably stomp with the right class and cooldowns.

In the case of Mesmers, the easiest way to address this would be by simply having the Mesmer reappear instantly after using Deception. This would make it possible to stomp using shadowsteps or other instant teleports, assuming the stomper picks the right target.

For Elementalists things are a little tricker, especially considering their immortality near keeps. You’d need to find a more creative solution for this case.

3. Rezz time vs. finisher time

It seems like that in some scenarios a single player can actually revive faster than your standard finisher goes, making successful 2v1s almost impossible. Why must revives be so incredibly fast? How is this fun and fair towards the already outmanned player?

I also don’t understand why the tools needed to stop such a revive are few and far between for some classes. Some builds simply don’t have any way to stop a revive and given the previous circumstance if revives being faster than stomps, can end up in fights they simply can’t win.

4. Power rezzing by multiple players. It’s stunning to see in WvW just how quickly a group of 5 players can resurrect a previously dead player. It’s a matter of seconds and way too effective considering a dead player should be considered “out” of any PvP battle. This is especially frustrating in WvW when you have a huge zerg knocking at your door and despite your solid defenses the enemies can just continue ressurrecting their dead ad infinitum.

Would it be possible that while in combat a second resurrecter would only add 50% rezz-speed, a third 25% etc? Seems reasonable to me.

Novomundum.8325:

I see. So the dp builds is op while everything else is fine. I can’t believe some people are condemning an entire profession based on 1 builds though. seems a bit close minded. But now, what’s the deal with dp? is there really absolutely no way to solve their nigh immortality?

No, the D/P build isn’t overpowered per se, or at least not in sPvP.

D/P’s strength is the ability for infinite stealth. And stealth has always been far more useful in WvW than sPvP.

But given how much more popular WvW is compared to sPvP then it’s far more likely you’ll hear people complain about D/P builds than any other.

The only way I really know of reliably killing any Thief in WvW is spaming them with CC. Playing a Thief myself, getting CC-spammed to death is by far my most common death (and I don’t even play D/P). Stun-Warriors can pull this off by themselves but on most other scenarios you’ll need more than one player.

As a Mesmer knocking a Thief out of his Shadowrefuge followed with some burst is also a good way to secure a kill. But getting to that point is hard enough. A conservative D/P Thief will simply remain in stealth until his HP is back up to 80%.

One weakness all roaming Thieves have though is their massive egos. You can use this to your advantage with a little creativity.

I’ve had this happen to me before too and I’m still not sure what it is.

At time I’ll just randomly get “Revealed” for no obvious reason. Since I use “Runes of the Ogre” I think it might have something to do with the Rock Dog. Maybe it breaks your Stealth when it attacks something.

Either that or Clusterbomb bleeds ticking are throwing me out of Stealth.

You have to separate WvW and sPvP during this debate.

In sPvP: Given the current CC-Cleave and Condition-Cleave meta-game Thieves are only really left with the Evasion spam option because it’s one of the few that actually allows them to go toe-to-toe with some of the classes. Any glassy Backstabbing build will just get you killed near instantly in the clusterkitten that is currently node-fights.

Given the entire scope of balance with stun-cleaving Warriors, Condition-crazy Necros and pet-loving Rangers, no Thieves aren’t overpowered. They are just as cheesy as the other overpowered builds just in less facerolling way.

WvW is a different matter completely.

In Zerg fights and Siege Thieves are borderline kitten . They can barely shoot down a wall and given how commonly the walls are spammed with AoE, can’t contribute much in any Siege situation. Clusterbombing during Zerg clashes is fine, but nothing to write home about. Daggerstorm is about as useful as it gets thanks to Stability but that only lasts a few seconds.

Roaming however is a completely different matter. The currently most popular build is Dagger/Pistol which abuses the combo-field synergy between Black Powder and Heartseeker to chain near infinite stealth. This makes the class nigh immortal in small skirmishes as they can always escape back into stealth and resurface once they’re fully healed. You can’t really kill them reliably with any class without them making mistakes. Your best bet currently is to simply ignore them because their damage isn’t so high and you can easily run away from them.

And yes, I consider any class that can’t really be killed 1v1 to be overpowered. So in that regard, yes, Thieves are OP. But not in the big picture.

Frankly, before Conditions went apekitten crazy and Necros could dump 6 Conditions + Fear on you within a second this trait made Thieves practically impervious to Conditions.

Any popular Thief build back then would stealth frequently and consequently remove conditions every few seconds.

This trait would be overpowered by all accounts, if Conditions weren’t so out of control as they are now. But they are, and in times where Singet of Agility will remove one of 6 Conditions a Necromancer can apply within seconds without even aiming, this trait is the only tool that allows Thieves to compete.

Because sPvP is always about holding points and sometimes carrying and Orb.

This is naturally something where defensive capabilities are more useful than offensive skills. Stealth, our only real defense decapps points and has a lengthy “reveal” debuff. It also doesn’t actually protect you from all the untargeted AoE damage flying around.

Honestly, Thieves are only good in controlled 1v1 scenarios. But the unbelievable amount of AoE damage, CC and minions that dominate PvP Thieves don’t have anything to hold against it.

If we look back at the history of popular and effective Thief builds they all share something in common.

They are always about spaming a certain ability (or ability combo) with vary little variation. This is a side-effect of the Initiative mechanic that equalizes expenditure among all abilities, encouraging you to only use your most effective.

You see, a Warrior that builds his build around 100-Blades is still forced to use his other abilities and time and setup his signature move accordingly. This gives the class a more varied and interesting play-style, both to play and play against.

A Thief on the other hand who builds his build around Flanking Strike + Lancerous Strike will try to spam that ability as much as possible because he can and it’s his most effective move. The same applies to Sneak Attack which is basically all a P/D Thief spams. D/P Thieves are in the same boat with their Black Powder + Heartseeker combo.

When you design a build for a Thief you are automatically trying to limit yourself as much as possible. The effect is that unlike other classes, Thieves never had and never will have something considered a “well-rounded” build. Thieves will always feel cheap and cheesy because being effective evolves around spaming whatever ability your build is focused on.

Every Thief build evolved in the same way:

1. Find a strength worth exploiting.
2. Pick traits to maximize that strength.
3. Pick enough passive Initiative regeneration so you can spam whatever ability you’re focused on.
4. Profit

What I am trying to convey is that Initiative as a class-resource, is fundamentally flawed……..that is if having a “well-rounded” game-play is even desired.

Imagine for example that Black Powder had a 9 second cooldown and Heartseeker had a 3 second cooldown. Suddenly your D/P combo wouldn’t just be about chaining the two for perma-stealth. Instead you’d be forced to utilize your other skills as well in order to gain an upper hand. This would make Thieves both more fun and skillful to play, as well as more fun and less cheesy to fight.

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

Nobody is expecting Rome to be built in a day, but we do like to see steps in the right direction with every patch.

The balance changes are what is especially disappointing. Most classes still use less than 50% of their abilities most of the time and have maybe 3 viable builds. Where is the progress towards more build and ability variety?

I certainly don’t want to be using the same old 3 abilities on my Thief I’ve been using for the past 5 months now.

Instead we get a couple of fixes which are fine….and completely arbitrary balance changes that don’t make sense half of the time…and are ineffective the other half of the time.

I’ve gotten more excited about a single patch in WoW than I have over all combined patches in GW2.

Yeah sorry, but I’m out.

I enjoy MMOs because of the constant evolution.

This game (and game-play) is evolving so slowly it feels like watching paint dry.

Hell, we already have such a limited number of abilities and viable builds yet there seems to be no changes in sight.

When you have such a shallow game, at least make regular changes. I don’t want to be doing the same shmuck for months on end.

So again, just a few fixes with no real changes.

This game has been stale for a while now and nothing is changing about that.

That’s what happens if time and money are the only requirements for Legendaries.

That and the fact that they are the only real “long-term” goal in this game.

Running level 36+ FotM and chances are you’ll have 1-2 Legendaries per group.

What consumables are you guys using in WvW?

I guess for Condition builds the 36/40% Condition Duration increase is hard to ignore. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rare_Veggie_Pizza

Combine that with those Tuning Crystals for a little extra Condition Damage and you have yourself a winner: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_Tuning_Crystal

But when it comes to Power/Burst builds things seem less obvious.

I’ve seen a number of people chose Toughness food over damage increases.

I for one have grown fond of Omnomberry Ghosts/Pies as they are especially effective when using Daggerstorm and the Warrior Axe Whirl.

The Sharpening Stones are also a lot more expensive than the Maintenance Oils that add Precision.

But maybe there’s other worth-while food out there that makes a big difference to a certain play-style. So what do you use?

Truebanana.5936:

Thief + ele d/d

I agree with this. They have good synergy too.

With the Thief popping in and out of Stealth all the time, it leaves the Elementalist as the only permanent target to focus on. And as we know Eles can take quite a beating and kite around very well.

Do that while the Thief picks off the train 1 by 1 and you have a winning duo.

ANet has been very slow and overly cautious when it comes to class changes to the point that the game is getting very stale.

Most professions consider maybe 30% of their traits and abilities viable so there’s plenty of room for more build diversity if things are improved. But they need to get more aggressive with their pace of change.

We’re getting to 6 months of the game’s life and some of the less popular abilities haven’t even been touched on, let alone the traits.

Well at least now I know it’s actually possible to solo the Lord. Last time I tried I got bumbkittened in seconds.

Power > all so every peace of gear should have Power as your main stat.

Soldier, aka. Power/Toughness/Vitality gear is a good place to start and will leave you with a decent amount of survivability.

There should be at least 2-3 P/T/V items out there for Karma.

Once you have that, you can start mixing in more offensive Berserker gear, mainly as your Accessories.

Nothing significant has changed about Thieves.

However you will notice fairly quickly that a lot of the other classes aren’t easy pickings anymore as various durable builds have become increasingly popular.

Most noticeable with Elementalists and Rangers.

SSC is so much wasted potential. I was hoping for an alternative to Cursed Shore but the island just can’t compete with all the AoE spamfests and Temples in CS.

Currently Waypoint usage is free in WvW while you have to repair your gear when you die.

The costs of one waypoint usage is very close to that of a single death so why not simply interchange to two? Add waypoint costs to WvW and remove the damaged gear.

Pros:

-People will no longer associate death with repair bills (although they’ll still be paying more or less the same bill unless they get resurrected constantly)
-Waypoint costs may discourage people from excessively teleporting around the maps.

Cons:
-None

Overall I think the costs of WvW should come around to roughly the same. You don’t have to pay as long as you get revived but you have to pay for your waypoint usage.

The positive thing is that you tax people for excessive waypoint usage, borderlands hopping etc. and people stop associating death with repair bills.

Some of you MMO veterans may recall the “rested XP bonus” debate from the WoW beta, where people would only earn 100% XP while their “rested bonus” lasted and 50% thereafter. Due to the negative outcry Blizzard simply said “you gain 200% XP during your rested bonus and 100% during the rest of the time”.

Effectively the same thing but it was much better received.

As far as I see it, 90% of Thieves are running these 3 utilities in any PvP setting.

Can’t really blame them because they are by far our best utilities.

Singet of Shadows may be debatable since we use it out of convenience more than anything. However landing melee hits without it is significantly harder since everyone is using speed increases nowadays.

Shadowstep is an obvious choice since a stun-breaker is a MUST-HAVE and Shadowstep is simply the best one. Roll for Initative while nice…just doesn’t have quite the same usefulness.

Shadow Refuge is another immensely useful ability. Nothing I really need to say since you all already know that.

Some of the other abilities have their situational uses like Blinding Powder or work in very specific builds. But overall the 3 abilities mentioned above are ALWAYS useful.

Those are the abilities the others should be measured by. Many of our current abilities need to be buffed up to the level of the 3 aforementioned so we can finally enjoy some of the build variety this game offers.

Yeah…while the 10 seconds are somewhat excessive I agree that Swiftness just makes more sense than the ominous “50% speed increase”….which apparently isn’t 50% anyway but rather 33%…which is exactly what Swiftness grants.

The reason why they probably didn’t make it Swiftness is because as a boon it is prone to modificators like “boon duration” .

That in turn might result in Thieves having quasi “perma-Swiftness”, which while nice, goes against the “temporary boost” nature of boons.

World mobs may drop “peanuts” but they drop it frequently enough for an infusion to pay off. I’d estimate one in maybe 10 Orrians will drop a bunch of Coppers.

Omnomberry Bars and the new utility infusion will easily turn it into a Silver or more.

Considering how many Orrians you are slaying during events…..that money can easily add up.

Ascended Gear would have been the perfect opportunity to allow players to customize their gear-stats using sockets.

For example every Ascended items would consist of 3 stats, 1 primary and 2 secondary. You could then find/buy sockets of any stat that you could socket into the new Ascended item.

You want a Power/Precision/Vitality item? No problem, make one!

You want Toughness/Crit-Damage/Condition Damage? No problem either.

But now…they conceived what is probably the worst form of item progression I have witnessed in an MMO.

There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense with Ascended gear.

For starters, why do we even have 3 different types of infusion slots?

I can understand utility infusion slots an an extent because you obviously don’t want us putting those in rings, but why differentiate between offensive and defensive? I mean you can only add one infusion anyway so why the arbitrary differentiation?

Seriously, what would change if all current infusions except for utility infusions were “versatile”? That’s right, nothing.

But since we have offensive and defensive utility slots we now need at least 2 (or3) versions of every Ascended item, instead of having more stat-combinations for example.

Also, why are the rings unique when we can have 2 identical versions anyway? Just seems like more forced RNG.

And finally, why do “fine” infusions cost such an exorbitant amount of resources?

I can’t help but feel that the whole Ascended Gear feels poorly conceived.

The whole Ascended gear, the infusions etc. all just seem badly conceived.

There’s no logical sense to them. Makes you wonder who designed them.

I mean to this day I don’t understand why we have 3 different types of infusion-slots. What are they supposed to achieve?

Ok…..so I’m not sure if this video is supposed to be promoting your build/play-style or be an example of why not to play it.

You displayed quite well just why nobody plays such a pure glass-cannon in WvW…because it’s a kittenty build to play that has no room for skillful play. Hell even in tPvP most people prefer to use 25/30/0/0/15 as the extra Initiative allows for a few more Cloak and Daggers or Heartseekers.

I’d have also though that “5 Might on Singet use” might be a better choice than some of the ones you picked since you’re running with 2 Singets anyway. Use both for an instant 10 Might…why not?

Also with over 50% Crit-Chance, Fury (+20%) on Steal, Sided Strikes and Keen Observer you already have an effective Crit-Chance of over 80%.

Hidden Killer isn’t worth it with so much Critical-Hit chance.

Ok I have a similar question.

Do Versatile Simple infusions (the ones purchased for 75 Fractal Relics providing 5 AR) fit into a Utility Infusion?

Because I’m planning to get my Amulet in a few hours.

My first priority is to maximize my AR so getting +5 AR is a must. But since the fine infusions are absurdly expensive I won’t be wasting resources on them.

However if possible I’d like to get an Amulet with a Utility infusion so that once they implement infused Amulets I can upgrade it with a useful Utility Infusion (I’m thinking +20% Gold from Monsters).

Bugged event chains…..6 months into this game….are still it’s biggest flaw.

The Hydra Queen event chain for example is still not commencing and instead simply stalled at the stage where the Lionsguard is preparing an attack.

It’s not like this is a small event chain either. It’s the Bloodtide’s Coast meta event.

I don’t understand how such standards are acceptable. 6 month into a new game and the events seem more prone to failure than they did during release.

But hey…at least we can do the Shadow Behemoth now.

Oh btw….I recently popped by the Temple of Balthazaar. Looks like that’s bugged out…again.

Something has definitely gone wrong with the January patch and it’s only gotten worse with the latest maintenance.

We can only hope that ANet manages to address the issue asap.

Yeah, this is getting too intense to ignore.

It’s not an ISP issue…it something at ANet. It was fine prior to the patch and it’s even fairly stable late at night. But during peak hours I’m getting constant lags followed by….

error: 7:11:3:189:101
and
error: 58:11:5:504:101

It wasn’t until the Dreadnaught cliffs that I realized why it was called Death Blossom.

Guardian seems like an obvious answer.

Well times wall of reflections and cooldown usage can really turn the tide of battle. That along with all the boons and general support and a Guardian will have the easiest time carrying a bad group.

Fiddler.5174:

So after looking at links and reading this thread…should I be getting my precision and crit damage from ruby in my slots? And not from any actual gear or trinkets?

The only outliner here is Crit-Damage since it’s a flat %-increase rather than a numerical value.

Getting Crit Damage from Orbs/Gems is by far the most efficient as you only sacrifice 5 or 7.5 regulat stat points per 1% Crit-Damage.

Take a Chest for example where you trade 72 stats for 5% Crit-Damage (14.4 stats per 1% Crit-Damage) and it shouldn’t be hard to see why.

Thieves have a trait called Hidden Killer that guarantees them a Critical Strike from Stealth.

Yet half the time it doesn’t work.

That sucks and it’s getting really annoying.

Previous lags during prime-time have now turned into disconnects at night.

….what the hell has been going on?

No, there’s no difference in “security” between Windows 7 and Windows 8.

The game isn’t optimized for Windows 8 however so there may be the odd glitch or performance issue. But overall you shouldn’t expect any problems.

MagnusLL.8473:

…in which the actions of 50 players make the actions of 5000 moot,

This has always been the core issue with “night-capping” and should have been to focus of the debate when it heated up months ago.

Instead it was drowned in the myriads of QQ about “why do you hate Australians/French-Canadians/Turkemenistanies”?

The shame is even ANet failed to recognize the core issue and instead chose to ignore it.

I love seing Zergs clash like that in open fields.

Just shows that confidence and momentum are equally as important as numbers.

Yeah, I’ve been reaching the same conclusion.

Infusion of Shadows allows you to practically disregard Initiative management assuming you actually hit your Cloak and Daggers. Without it you need other forms of Initiative replenishment in order to be able to use it consistently.

While playing Pistol/Dagger with 15 Initiative I could get by without Infusion of Shadows. But missing a Cloak and Dagger was painful.

The thing with Infusion of Shadows is however that it forces you to pick between either “Blind on Stealth” or “Condition Removal in Stealth”, both of which are really, really valuable.

One big flaw with crafting in this game is that everyone can do everything.

A society works because people specialize. But in GW2 everyone is master of everything and competing with everyone.

Yramrag.3026:

I’ve 400 in Armorcrafting, Jeweller, Leatherworks, and recently trying to level up cooking. I had not much problem leveling the other crafts, but I found it hard going for cooking. the problem is with getting the recipes.

The Discovery method is so awkward, I have tons of food mats appearing in the interface, and I have to “guess” by trial and error clicking each one for various combination, hoping to hit upon a new recipe – it is so tedious! The auto-unlocked recipe base on level is so limited, and grey out so fast. I’m not sure where else to get recipes.

The only orange recipes left which I can get some XP are the rare dyes, and the mats are so expensive and difficult to farm (Yam anyone?). Can any good chef give me some advice please?

You need to follow a cooking guide to level cooking at any acceptable pace.

There are just far too many possible combinations of food items out there to have any reasonable success with discoveries. You’re lucky enough to have 2 items that would actually give you experience if only you could figure out what the 3rd or 4th ingredient was.

Cooking is completely bloated with close to 100 different ingredients, not counting all the intermediate ingredients.

Just google: Cooking Guide GW2 and look for a more recent ones and just follow those recipes. At least that way you’ll actually get somewhere.

Shufflepants.9785:

Well, one reason not to stack exclusively power is that power and precision stack multiplicatively.

100 power does less damage than 50 power and 50 precision.

Except it doesn’t. 100 Power > 50/50.

And you cannot even comment on the value of Precision without accounting for Crit-Damage and those two stats scale proportionately.

Power is almost always the best DPS stat by far. The only exceptions are when you cause Conditions on Crits or need to procc your weapon Sigils.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/17zsxz/practical_case_of_power_vs_precision_math/

I am also wondering if Shadowsteps are considered “teleports” or if this only refers to Mesmer portals.

The build-up to the new content is just incredibly slow.

I too have been wondering what was in that 1.1 GB patch I downloaded.

Yeah, pure glass-cannon is kinda sucky outside of 1v1. A single CC at the wrong time will get you killed.

Condition Damage builds tend to be a bit more durable and sustainable but have other issues.

1. Auto-Condition cleansing has become abundant. Almost all professions are relying on traits/abilities that cleanse Conditions passively every few seconds. This includes Thieves, Eles, Guardians and Rangers.

2. Not enough pressure to prevent revives. I found this especially problematic when playing Pistol/Dagger. Yes, P/D is insanely overpowered and hard to kill but it’s really hard to stop people constantly reviving each other when engaging zergs.

While undoubtedly effective, P/D made me absolutely DESPISE the down-state/resurrection mechanics in this game.

3. Pistol/Dagger is really, really boring. Yeah, it’s fun being overpowered and taking on groups of 4 and coming out on top. But the always same play-style and lack of pressure really make it quite repetitive over time.

I can’t comment on that, but it typically sends out roughly 6 projectiles per second into different directions which in turn bounce to nearby targets, all while reflecting incoming projectiles back at their sender.

And this is new and exciting exactly how?

Next thing you’re going to tell us Thieves can Cloak and Dagger off animals and critters.

Maybe there’s some minor tweaks to fix some of the more recent lag issues people have been experiencing.

Yeah it really does get in the way.

Especially annoying in WvW when you announce “Charge in 10 Sek.” and then countdown to 0 only to get caught in the spam filter by the time you reach 3 and the whole thing falls apart.

viespeadivina.7961:

Unfortunately , cooking is useless, except making legendary items. You can sell materials and make way more profit than cooking the products for yourself. Sad, but true.

True in general although there are a few exceptions.