Guild Wars 2

I think you just outplayed him.

….or he was upleveled…a lot.

Yes, here: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/

Not sure how reliable it is but it should work for most things.

Yes, currently most popular builds ignore 70% of the traits available and maybe half of the possible utilities.

Taking a Thief as an example, both Venoms and Traps are highly, highly situational (read: crap). There is almost no build that can make proper use of them and even then if it would be highly gimmeky.

Compare that to abilities like Shadow Refuge and Shadowstep and there’s really no surprise why 90% of Thieves run with those.

Well balance is always seen relative to others.

However PvE as a static environment kind of sets the parameters. So yes, you can end up with 8 overpowered professions if you do it wrong.

There are times to buff and there are times to nerf. In general whichever change requires the fewest alterations is the best approach. Otherwise you just end up with a viscous buff-cycle.

Without backpedaling I cannot dodge backwards. So it’s kind of important.

But aside from that using strafing as opposed to keyboard turning is a big deal.

I’m running 0/30/30/10/0 too with full Valkyrie gear and have no problems completing Fractals at level 35.

It really all comes down to weapon/skill flexibility and experience. And let’s be honest, PvE is practically fail-safe as long as you have enough Agony Resistance.

Well Skale Venom is hardly OP, but Gear is.

I think it’s a side-effect of WvW using the PvE rule-set. Everything that isn’t specifically banned from working, works.

I’ve been experiencing severe lags and frequent disconnects for the past 10 days or so.

However only during the peak hours of 19.00 – roughly 22.00 CET.

Server Abaddon’s Mouth.

Shiren.9532:

Dee Jay.2460:

You really think people are going to care much about a +1 score when keeps and supply camps are giving your realm around 50 or 100 points every 15 min?

I don’t think it would have a huge effect on the way people play.

I also don’t see how it encourages more zerging.

I guarantee, if they made kills contribute one point for every death, kills would end up being more important than a lot of towers and even keeps. It’s not uncommon to see hundred of deaths in a 15 minute period when sieging or defending a keep.

Well I think 100 kills for one fraction within 15 minutes might be pushing it a little. It may happen occasionally and that’s fine, but I don’t see it happening consistently.

The thing is, even in a Zerg vs. Zerg clash…which is fairly uncommon in an open field there really aren’t that many people dying. Even if a 30 man zerg, which is quite sizable overruns a 20 man zerg (medium sized) normally half of them might escape.

So that nets one team 10 kills. Assuming that happens twice within 15 minutes then that’s 20.

If you add the kills the other faction is also scroing the net difference grows smaller and smaller.

On average I estimate I die about once every 30 minutes or so in WvW and I assume this is similar for most players. So while there may be spikes I don’t think the kills would be anywhere near as influential as people here seem to think.

Especially not if you take the counter-kills into account.

It’s really quite similar to sPvP. Kills may score your 5 points for the team but in the end it’s always the team with the better node-control that wins.

Yeah I have to agree with the Accountant.

Sure it would be great to see changes to the current crafting system and fine-tuning of existing recipes but I don’t see it happening.

Crafting in this game was really mostly a copy + paste from existing MMOs instead of being a system that actually suited the game.

Without a detailed description of how Magic Find actually works it’s hard to access it fairly.

Back during the days of Plinx farming in Cursed Shore going from 0 to 160% Magic Find certainly had a noticeable effect. The number of rare drops went from averaging roughly 1/hour to roughly 3/hour. It was very volatile obviously and you’d still get occasional droughts but I had not doubt that it was worthwhile.

However with the November patch and the subsequent changes to Orr loot it felt like MF was no longer worth it. The revised loot system (aka. nerfed) wasn’t yielding good results in general and MF gear wasn’t having much of an effect either.

Since I was more or less done with Karma grinding at that point anyway I stopped farming Orr and salvaged my MF gear. Now I just use Omnomberry Bars for the increased money drops and am back to maybe 1 rare/hour if I do ever farm Orr for that long.

That’s just another reason why WvW should only take place on a single coherent map.

Currently there are too many ways to avoid PvP and still yield good results.

Zergs should be encouraged to clash, not avoid each other running Karma trains in opposite directions.

Maybe 5 bucks or so per month.

With more than that I’d start questioning the value/money tough.

God this is so annoying how dungeons force us to babysit these borderline kitten NPCs ALL OF THE FRACKING TIME.

I’m sitting here in CoF path 2 for the last 15 minutes because Magg keeps bugging around and doesn’t do what he’s supposed to.

Argh this is so frustrating.

/rant

I’m totally with the OP here.

I’ve done the Fractal dozens of times and it’s nothing but tedious. It’s kind of like the Squid Boss battle.

Repetitive and time consuming without a real challenge (because you can’t really fail).

The fact that much of the jumping part is simply unfair in design doesn’t help.

The game generates a completely new item when throwing something into the mystic toilet.

The upside is that it is not soulbound and can be vendored or salvaged.

The downside is that you lose any previously installed upgrade.

Ok this is something I personally find really annoying and I can’t figure out if there’s some system behind it all or if it’s just a bug.

Roughly 60% of the time I want to invite somebody into my group, I have to manually type in their name and press “invite” instead of being able to use the rightclick—>invite into group feature because it’s missing more often than not.

I cannot figure out why though since this happens even when the player is inside the same zone on the same server.

I understood there was an issue with cross-server invites but this “bug” occurs regardless of location.

Since some players have really long names, occasionally using special accents, it makes forming a group somewhat tedious. When I get two whispers for the same spot I always pick the one I can invite right away instead of having to type out the name.

Med.6150:

Nope, they do not stack.

Yes they do.

-%-based increases stack
-proccs share an internal cooldown (so you can only benefit from 1 proc effect at a time)
-you may also only have 1 stacking Sigil at a time (which will remain active even after unequipping).

Fighting Thieves is certainly the most thrilling.

I personally love going after the full gass-cannons the most although they are far less challenging to kill than some of the more durable builds. Those certainly put up the best fights.

All expect Pistol/Dagger. If I encounter one of those without my Sword + Dagger equipped I just walk away.

Eles can be fun to fight too and they often will. They’re probably the only class than has a similar sized ego to Thieves and think they can win everything. The nuisance with Eles is that they’ll just bugger off once things start going south and there’s not much that can stop them.

Most other classes are a lot less exciting to fight and either fight in a very predictable fashion or simply don’t die (Bunkers for example).

He could have been using a Sword mainhand. It hits multiple targets with it’s attack and Tactical Strike, the Stealth attack, will daze the target for 2 seconds. However it only hits a single target at a time.

I assume this is the most likely scenario because I can’t think of any other where he’d be able to consistently daze an entire group.

Seeing 5 players of my server run up to kill 3 of the other server only for them all to end up dead.

Thieves can fire a Choking Gas are poison field from Stealth without being revealed because it only deals condition damage (and typically not very much).

But he probably wasn’t spaming it and it can’t have caused a lot of damage.

The other explanation might be culling if there was a crowded situation. The game is having real problems managing a large number of players on screen and often doesn;t display them until they’re really close.

You really think people are going to care much about a +1 score when keeps and supply camps are giving your realm around 50 or 100 points every 15 min?

I don’t think it would have a huge effect on the way people play.

I also don’t see how it encourages more zerging.

Cactus.2710:

You guys need to go play sPvP or arenas … you don’t belong in a team oriented activity. The whole idea of WvW is for all players to have an opportunity to make a significant contribution to the overall server score without encouraging them to prioritize individual glory over group objectives. There are other venues that do pretty much exactly what you want … quit trying to ruin this one.

I don’t see how you can reach such a conclusion simply based on kill messages in map-chat.

Actually they might as well just copy the sPvP system with the kill span on the right side.

What an odd build.

Generally speaking utilizing both Crit-Damage and Condition damage always leave you with sub-par results. And both D/D and P/P are mainly Power weapon-sets.

I can’t recommend you use the build you posted as it doesn’t have any obvious synergy to me.

Stick with a pure Power build and roll with a 15/30/10/15/0 build instead.

Since WvW is primarily a PvP activity it just feels appropriate that actual PvP should contribute towards the overall score.

Just like in sPvP really where the majority of the score comes from holding contested points but the kills add a little flavor to the mix.

Something like +1 score for every kill your server scores against the others would seem appropriate.

It would also have the added benefit of actually making peak-hour play just a little more meaningful as opposed to night-capping.

I’ve been observing a somewhat irritating bug recently with Clusterbomb in that occasionally, especially when spaming the ability during events, the odd Clusterbomb simply wont explode.

I mean I pay the Initiative, I see the projectile fly…..but then there’s no impact and no numbers. It just disappears with no feedback what might have happened.

This happens quite frequently….with maybe 5-10% of Clusterbombs during Orr farming. I haven’t noticed it much elsewhere but it still occurs.

What is this sorcery?

A Thief playing the 45-sek. instant-gib build.

This is truly new and original content that deserves to be shown.

/sarcasm

I understand this was supposed to be a promo video but quality content is what’s going to get you views….and this was just…….the build every Thief plays the first time they roll into PvP.

I’ll just copy and paste this from the very same question on reddit earlier today:

1. Don’t limit yourself to a particular set of utility skills. Every situation calls for different utility skills and a bad Thief is one who doesn’t adapt.

2. Same applies to weapons sets and traits. Only because your build is built around Dagger/Dagger shouldn’t stop you from using a Sword when the occasion calls for it.

As for the actual build, I recommend you use a 15/30/10/15/0 build:

15 point in Deadly Arts make your auto-attacks apply Weakness which is pretty nice in PvE. It also adds a fair amount of Power, which is good.

30 points in Critical Strikes are obviously for DPS purposes.

10 points in Shadow Arts give you the choice between 3 good traits. Blind in Stealth which is great when Backstabing trash mobs, +2 Initiative when Stealthing which really helps to keep Initiative high or Pulsing Condition Removal every 3 seconds. This can save your life in certain PvE encounters. Just remember to switch to the right trait for every situation.

15 points in Acrobatics give you Feline Grace (as well as Vigor) so you can Dodge more than you could ever need. the HP bump is also quite nice.

Gear-wise it’s about finding the right balance between offense and defense. Your traits make you fairly durable but you’ll still need at least 16.000 HP to feel comfortable. It really comes down to mixing Berserker, Valkyrie and arguably Knight’s and Soldier gear to find your personal sweet spot.

Dedalus.3065:

Dee Jay.2460:

That’s evolving meta game.

But at some point when a certain class becomes so overpowered it negatively affects the game as a whole, you really need to swing the nerf bat. There are a couple of synergies in the Elementalist build that are clearly too good.

But once running 3+ Elementalists in your 5 man group becomes increasingly popular you start having a problem.

Eles aren’t the only ones in dire need of a nerf however. They’re just the most obvious.

Synergies in a profession makes things fun. Strategically choosing abilities, having options and dynamics in battles makes them fun. Instead of removing them from one profession, they should add them to the others. Naturally, this requires more effort hence the fact that developers prefer to nerf instead of buff.

Synergy is what defines a good build. That applies to all classes and professions. And all classes have a varying degree of synergy within their builds.

It’s just problematic when synergies are stacked to such an extent that they make a class significantly more powerful than everyone else.

It’s not ok for Eles to achieve a 300% power increase from synergy when other classes only may be able to gain an additional 100%.

Hence why Eles need a nerf (amongst others).

Thieves…

…now one-shotting you…

….from a mile away.

That ought to go down well in the community.

I’m all for giving Thieves more weapon choice and rifles seem like an obvious choice. I even like some of the abilities you suggest even though the initiative costs seem a little on the low end.

But the Sniping mechanic would really cause some issues.

Why not just have sniping as a Stealth attack with a 2.5 second cast time and maybe 1500 range. Seems a lot fairer than adding a completely new contrived mechanism.

Dueling is great for killing time and would encourage people to hang out in the Mists.

It should not be put into a separate instance.

Just give us an expanded area in the back of the Mists where we can beat each other up. Maybe a mini-arena with some minor obstacles, nothing special.

Resouled.5614:

Dedalus.3065:

The funny thing is that the ele bunker build that everyone is complaining about has been up for what 3 months? It was even nerfed because of EA, and it’s been pretty stagnant since then.

Yeah, it’s funny. Same goes for traprangers.. they’ve been the same for 3 months, no buffs, no nerfs really and suddenly they’re OP. What’s next? Bunker engineers?

That’s evolving meta game.

But at some point when a certain class becomes so overpowered it negatively affects the game as a whole, you really need to swing the nerf bat. There are a couple of synergies in the Elementalist build that are clearly too good.

But once running 3+ Elementalists in your 5 man group becomes increasingly popular you start having a problem.

Eles aren’t the only ones in dire need of a nerf however. They’re just the most obvious.

echo.2053:

I did that once….. 8 months later i had a whining voice in my house just like —-^

Gratz on the baby.

But how is Stealth stomp any different than Shroud stomp, Vapor form stomp, Stability Stomp or Quickness stomp or any other form of immunity out there?

At least you can still damage and CC stealthed players. The same cannot be said for the other forms of stomping.

Sword is certainly not underrated and I find myself using it more in PvE than I do use Daggers.

It’s just less archetypal for a Thief class to use Swords which is why many players will initially opt for double Daggers.

Sword really only becomes more attractive once you grasp some of the more intricate mechanics like standing in a Black Powder combo field cleaving away at mobs or the base-line stunbreaker in Infiltrator’s Strike.

The first thing I tell anyone who is starting a new Thief is to roll with Sword mainhand and none of them have ever regretted it.

If they allowed you to customize your own stats independently from the actual gear, via sockets for example, then a lot of these issues would go away.

No more need to cover every possible combination if you can just socket 1 prime stat and 2 secondary stat into every exotic/ascended item you find.

I think ANet has been having some technical/latency issues this week, especially on EU servers.

That’s why I assume they’re having the maintenance next week to fix this.

This might be why you’re experiencing severe lag. That…or you just have and old computer.

That would be the first I ever heard such a thing.

Then again, it might not be such a bad idea.

I for one have done numerous dungeons runs since the patch and haven’t had any issues with not being able to waypoint during combat.

All I can say about this match-up is….

Riverside,…..Riverside everywhere.

I’m not even going to attempt to justify such damage.

I’ve been saying that Mug needs a nerf and this is just further proof.

Vgman.4019:

Engis you can see coming, engis you can prepare for, engis you can preempt. Already stealth thieves? Your dead before theirs a chance to react.

To be fair, and already stealthed Thief can’t hit you like that. Mug would apply Revealed to him which would ruin his consecutive Cloak and Dagger + Backstab.

An already stealthed Thief can only hit you with Backstab.

A big problem with the “instant-gib” combo is that it is instant and almost completely untelegraphed. Steal has no animation and the Cloak and Dagger is a very subtle melee attack too, let alone that it is pre-cast most of the time.

Aside from a few very rare occasions with Lupicus I don’t recall a boss resetting because of Stealth unless there was no other target attacking him/in range.

Thanks guys, I’ve found a new look I’m reasonably happy with.

Special thanks to Mif for the obvious inspiration.

No because apparently having instances, challenging fights for more than 5 people is somehow evil.

I personally would like to see an oldschool feature make a return to WvW.

Specifically a zone wide announcement in the chat window (in a non-intrusive manner) about who killed what.

Basically any time somebody kills in WvW you see a “Somebody killed Gunnar’s Hold Invader” message.

I think this help people build reputations for themselves in WvW, similar to what it did in DAoC.

The multi-guild system is something that sounded good on paper or in the head of a designer who hasn’t played an MMO….ever….

…but goes entirely against the social constructs of an MMO community.

Not representing a guild is like putting it on hold. And nobody likes being put on hold. It’s like having a relationship with more than one partner. Good for you, but your partners are going to hate you.

morrolan.9608:

What self respecting thief would have a bow that shoots unicorns?

I do

Saital.4819:

Yuujin.1067:

I feel like non-thieves (and some actual thieves) forget that you sacrifice all of your endurance (And ability to dodge) for haste. It isn’t like the other trade offs, take additional damage/can’t be healed for the duration of haste, it has a longer lasting impact. Assuming you counter this by picking up Signet of Agility, thieves are the only class that need to counteract their quickness utility with another utility to maintain survivability.

Well, technically speaking, some warriors run Endure Pain to offset their Frenzy. But I agree with you in that the effects of endurance drain don’t end when the quickness ends. The endurance must then regenerate entirely, and for much of that time the thief is a sitting duck.

Yeah but how many players really get to capitalize on that? With the amount of damage and pressure a Quickeness Thief put out the Thief would either have to some how screw up or the defender use some kind of cooldown in order the counter-pressure the Thief.

It’s the same issue with Frenzy really. When a Warrior uses Frenzy (which he does mostly when he can afford to) you get the hell out of dodge. You don’t stick around to try and counter-pressure him unless you have some kind of cooldown.

It’s funny how that while we all seem to agree that Eles need a nerf, we’ve sort of accepted that Guardians are equally as unkillable. They just don’t have the mobility.

Mesmers have Portals as their saving grace but other than that it’s time to do some pro-active balancing here.

The reason I picked the Dreamer for my Thief because I knew the Shortbow was always going to be by 2andary weapon, regardless of which build I was going to be using.

Even after a few buffs and nerfs the Shortbow will still be a great weapon for Thieves even if you’re not using it all the time.

With the Ranger I think even though you might be using it more often (90% of the time as opposed to say…50%) it’s more susceptible to balance changes than the Thief Shortbow.