(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
I too would really recommend a Sword mainhand. It really is the best for leveling and doesn’t require a massive Initiative dump like Death Blossom spam.
I remember a quote regarding daily achievements saying they would allow players to chose which part of the daily achievement they’d like to pursue.
For example you have six random achievements to chose from:
-Dodge
-Kill Variety
-Events
-Crafting
-Collecting
-Salvaging
-Underwater kills
-Combo Fields
-etc.
But rather than having to complete all six for the daily achievement, you only have to complete 4.
I did think this was they way they were going to be, but obviously not.
Yep, the Shadow Arts tree is really your friend in that regard.
You may also consider the Singet of Agility if you want more condition removal. However it will only remove one condition if you are solo roaming.
Yeah a Thief is probably close to the exact opposite of a Guardian.
Not to bash on Guardians, but they are a very forgiving class. Thieves needs to utilize Stealth and Dodges to survive anything for more than a few seconds.
Simin is a boss that isn’t hard per say.
It’s just the incredibly frikkle mechanics of a fight that make it such a pain.
That’s bad design right there.
It’s not the good type of hard where you can analyze your mistakes and see how you can overcome them.
It’s the bad type of hard where you’re fighting with these incredibly stupid mechanics more than the actual boss.
I can’t recall all the bosses from memory, but here are a few bullet-points that separate good and bad design:
Rule of thumb:
Your average combat length should be based on the number of ability/mechanics a boss has. Every mechanic means a boss-fight remains engaging for another minute.
Ergo, if you have a boss with only 2 different abilities you shouldn’t be fighting him for longer than 2 minutes. Lupius on the other hand has about 6 or 7 different abilities so fighting him for 6 or 7 minutes is ok.
Things to avoid:
-Don’t have overly melee-hateful mechanics
-Avoid having excessively high auto-attack damage
-No untelepgraphed “instant-gib” mechanics
-No frikkle or unresponsive mechanics (like Simin in Arah)
-Decisions have to have meanigful consequences. You decide to destroy a totem to remove a boon from the boss then it should stay off for at least 15 seconds.
The monthly achievement always has encouraged players to explore ALL aspects of the game.
Sometimes it was about Fractals, sometimes about WvW, sometimes about Dungeons, sometimes about unique Events, sometimes about Jumping Puzzles.
Guess what, you’re not going to like it every time.
Deal with it and stop complaining that the game doesn’t cater to your very specific desires.
I too support this idea.
I’ve always been a fan of more “open” systems like the Call of Duty “pick 10” system rather than maintaining artificial restrictions.
We’d have to find a solution for the passive trait bonuses however although I wouldn’t mind them being done away with. It’s not like they add a lot of meaningful choice or anything.
You can never please everybody, that’s just the nature of things.
I for one prefer the new effect but am still a bit disappointed by the lack of particle effects or footsteps.
If I’m not firing the weapon nobody knows it’s Legendary.
Yeah, that’s the catch. Speed increase isn’t something unique of special.
If every profession has it, then you feel gimped when you don’t use it. But if everyone uses it, you might as well just get rid of it because it’s not a real advantage.
I can’t comment on other professions but roughly 80% of Thieves I see use Singet of Shadows in almost all situations.
When you harvest something you have a random chance of harvesting a rare material. For wood these are little treasures, for Ore these are Jewels and for plants these are occasional dyes and whatnot.
The advanced gathering tools give you a higher chance of getting these, a bit like Black Lion tools did.
We have an interesting discussion going on on the Thieves forum currently about Singet of Shadows a passive singet that grants us 25% movement speed increase.
It is my understanding that many professions feature similar such increases and I want to take a moment to highlight why this is poor design.
1. Passive speed increases are addicting – After a while playing without such an increase feels slow and sluggish. You feel compelled to use it even if it doesn’t suit your build or character just because you’ve gotten so used to it.
2. It forces us into an Arms race – When fighting someone else with a passive speed increase not having one puts you at a severe disadvantage, especially as a melee character. Suddenly 125% speed has become the deacto standard and you are gimped with out it.
3. It renders many boons and effects redundant – At 25% speed, Swiftness is a rather minor 8% increase….barely noticeable in many situations. This makes the whole boon feel rather pointless and unnecessary which affects multiple traits and abilities.
4. It takes up a limited utility slot – With only 3 utility slots available using one for a passive speed increase further limits the already fairly limited combat depth and utility. Having deep and interesting combat requires a certain number of active abilities to be used and a passive speed increase just isn’t that.
Now people may rightfully point out that you have a choice to ignore such a singet, and that may be true. But it’s a bad kind of choice where you feel gimped and slow when running without it while it not really adding depth to the game-play.
Tl;DR: Situational speed increases like Swiftness are ok. Even traits that allow faster movement speeds are. But permanent, passive speed singets are not. They present a bad form of choice while rendering many other boons and traits moot.
Yeah, I kind of agree.
All these passive speed increase force you into something of an arms-race. It’s already hard to land a Backstab successfully at times and it gets really difficult when people have constant speed boosts.
This and the fact that these speed boosters take up the place of an active ability slot which could otherwise provide more combat depth is pretty bad design.
I too would be much happier if we lost all these passive speed boosters and were left with Swiftness.
Backstab can be a little iffly to land, that’s true.
Any sort of speed increase, be is Swiftness or Singet of Shadows helps with the positioning.
I also found that the extra second of Stealth you get from the Shadow Arts tree really help to land a Backstab.
It’s really abut practice and patience. If you can afford to wait, then let people do their wee dances and dodges and then strike while their stamina is low.
I would like to clear a few things up:
1. Zerging absolutely should remain a viable way to play WvW.
It’s accessible to casual players and an easy concept to understand. It also gives less committed or up-leveled players a way to contribute.
2. However Zerging should absolutely NOT be the most effective/rewarding way to play WvW.
Currently Zergs offer too much safety and don’t have enough effective counter-mechanisms in play. They need more effective counters and less safety in numbers.
Thats a nice opinion piece. But why should zergs not be rewarded the same? Your incorrect supposition is assuming the game is built for 5 man elitism when it clearly is not. Buffs are based on radius, not groups. The game is clearly a break away from group based dynamics and that is its success story.
How can you possibly misread my post in just about every conceivable way?
I never said Zergs shouldn’t be rewarded the same. I said it shouldn’t be the most effective/rewarding way to play. A Zerg should be rewarded based on achievements, just like it is now. It just shouldn’t to be as effective as it is currently.
Ahem…I can’t even begin to assume how you reach your conclusions. I would argue with you if it made any sense…but it does not.
Currently sPvP is almost entirely separate from the rest of the game.
This is somewhat understandable considering the competitive nature and environment of sPvP.
Yet I don’t understand why skins earn’t in sPvP should be limited to that environment as well. If someone has invested a lot of time and effort in sPvP why should he/she not be able to show it off to the rest of the world?
Prestige and recognition is after all one of the few reasons we actually pursue rare items.
Allow people who have access to fancy PvP armors to show them off in the rest of the game as well.
They are even worse in WvW.
By far the most overpowered thing I’ve seen in this game.
Thieves are annoying…..but Elementalists are just godmode.
Southsun Cove always felt like a huge missed opportunity.
After months of farming Plinx in Orr I thought ANet might give us a real alternative to farming Orr. Instead though they nerfed Plinx (which is fine) and instead gave us a zone with:
-Very dangerous mobs, especially for glass-cannons
-A zone with low event density
-A zone with very few “mass spawn” events
The only good thing about the Southsun cove is the relatively high density of Mithril and other crafting mats. But that’s hardly worth the visit considering how abundant they are elsewhere.
If it weren’t for the Rich Orchi Node and the Karma tools the Cove would barely have any visitors at all.
I honestly don’t think it’s good design.
The problem is it renders many other effects like Swiftness obsolete as they prove to be a very minor boost.
It also has this addicting nature that playing without it feels clunky and slow.
It also sucks that it takes up one of our already very limited utility slots.
People may argue that you have a choice, but it’s not the good kind of choice. It’s a choice between playing slow-mode and what you’ve become accustomed to.
I’d much rather have a trait that grants a passive 25% speed and pick another active ability.
Elementalist,
kill everything in sight (even if it takes a while) and if you get outnumbered…..just make an escape.
Thieves are annoying, true but not nearly as stupidly overpowered as Elementalists currently.
Sounds like a gimped version of a Pistol/Dagger build.
What, is it time to conquer earth?
Can’t we just lose the DR?
Bots aren’t nearly as wide-spread as they used to be.
People are already immensely rich due to playing the trade-post.
Hardcore players all already have their Legendaries so there’s no reason to farm.
All the DRs are doing is affecting people who don’t deserve to be affected by them.
Before the patch there was a lot of talk about an upcoming nerf to AoE damage.
But when reading the patch-notes I don’t recall hearing about a single such nerf.
What happened to the announced AoE nerf?
I would like to clear a few things up:
1. Zerging absolutely should remain a viable way to play WvW.
It’s accessible to casual players and an easy concept to understand. It also gives less committed or up-leveled players a way to contribute.
2. However Zerging should absolutely NOT be the most effective/rewarding way to play WvW.
Currently Zergs offer too much safety and don’t have enough effective counter-mechanisms in play. They need more effective counters and less safety in numbers.
What are you referring to? In what terms “make of break”?
Regarding progression, content or balance?
I’m just going to put out some possible solutions.
I propose:
-Conditions now carry over into “downed state”.
-“Stomp” animation is accelerated by 33%, cutting it down to two seconds (down from 3)
-Multiple revivers stack multiplicatively rather than additively. So two healers revive at 150% speed, rather than 200% speed.
-Resurrecting is only possible while out of combat.
PS: Revive = healing downed state, resurrect = healing defeated state.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
I’d still like the Dreamer to have some unique particle effects and/or footsteps.
I’ll give you a quick rundown
Crafting: Forget about it for now. It’s only a source of extra XP which you won’t need if you explore all the content. Store your materials and then consider leveling it later if you want. But for now it’s not worth the time and money.
PS: There’s a “store ingredients” button in your inventory.
Salvaging: Use Basic Salvage Kits to salvage white items. Sell the green and blue items to vendors and the yellow ones on the trade post.
Weapons: Feel free to mess around with all of them. But ultimately I’d recommend going with Sword + either Pistol or Dagger off-hand. Swords are simply superior for leveling due to their cleave damage.
If you do dungeons make sure to keep your Shortbow ready as they are unforgiving for melees.
I will concur that S/D is one of the best Power-based weapon sets for Thieves.
+Thanks to Sword Cleaves you will deal more DPS than even D/D builds in many situations.
+It doesn’t require a lot of Initiative. Auto-attacks deal the most damage so there’s little need to invest into Initiative saving traits.
+Built in stun breaker with Infiltrator’s Strike. No need to use a dedicated stun-breaker anymore when required.
+Built in Condition Removal with Infiltrator’s Strike. Just another perk of that amazing ability.
+Boon removal which can occasionally be useful in PvE. I’ll admit it’s situational at best, but does come in handy.
+The USP of S/D however is the ability to “daze lock” targets in both PvE and PvP. Dazing those pesky casters every few seconds can make PvE a breeze.
unique borderlands per server would make for unbalanced play. There is no way they could balance that correctly, which is why it is the way it is.
Bollox, the layout of the map has very, very minute impact on the actual WvW outcome/performance.
The Eternal Battleground doesn’t have an identical layout for every Keep and is still balanced.
Find another mmo then, this game thought outside the box and created a game without healers and rezzing class’s. Downed state is a part of this system. You don’t like this system I can’t help you, WvW is not 1 v 1 experience, yes you can find duels I do all the time but they are few and far in between and don’t expect it of my gaming experience. I also don’t expect to change every other players gaming experience to suffice my wants.
Instead they created a game where EVERYONE is a healer and EVERYONE has battlerezzes.
Solo roaming absolutely should be viable and I’m 100% with the OP on this issue. The nature of resurrection and revives doesn’t just impair small scale combat however, it also makes large zerg clashes drag on forever because people are constantly rezzing. Defending keeps is pretty futile because you can’t stop people from resurrection constantly.
However we must differentiate a little between the different problems as mutliple factors play into it:
1. We have downed state
2. We have the speed at which people can revive downed players
3. We have defeated state
4. We have the speed at which people can resurrect defeated players.
Imo the downed state isn’t the big problem, but rather the speed of revives. A normal player can revive quicker than a finisher can channel. If you take the unavoidable interrupt into account then it gets even harder to finish someone while outnumbered.
Then there’s the fact that people can resurrect defeated players, even in the middle of combat. That imo is a broken system and shouldn’t happen. There must be a state in which a player is defeated for good. Resurrecting while in combat should not be possible.
I joined a PuG yesterday who was obviously struggling with the event. I found it to be easier than the old event, assuming your were fighting, not kiting.
There really isn’t much too it though expect having good AoE DPS while focusing down the Assassins. As a Thief I was spaming Cluster bomb most of the time and then switched to Daggers to focus down an Assassin…then switched back again.
The only “trick” I saw is that people obviously can’t afford to die. We had a Warrior who insisted on dying on every attempt. Full glass-cannon who aren’t great players are gonna have a hard time with this event.
Sword Stealth attacks can daze (aka. stun) a target for roughly 2 seconds and is quite an effective weapon when combined with Dagger off-hand.
I do see a point though in that the Thief class is rather light on CC compared to other classes, which is a bit of a shame since it would open up more options.
Actually I’d like a system where you could pick 7 minor and 7 major traits, regardless of tree, and build from there.
A bit like the “pick 10” system from CoD.
Assuming the 5.800 was a crit, which it must have been since I cannot imagine how you’d reach such numbers without critting, then it’s not exceptionally high.
About 6k is what a typical Backstab will hit for with most “balanced” Dagger/Dagger builds.
You should have come sooner. Back during the days of the old Assassin’s Singet it was possible to Crit people for upwards of 12k.
What’s really problematic for me is using targeted AoE from an elevated position like a Keep Wall.
Gas Cloud for example can barely shoot down at all let alone hit something just a few yards from the wall.
They really need to look at how elevation affects the range calculation as it seems incredibly off.
Well that is one of the upsides of creating PvP content. It may take longer to make but it pays off because it’s essentially a sandbox environment and never gets old. Take Warsong Gulch in WoW for example. I don’t want to know how may bazillion hours have been spent in that BG and it probably took half as much time to make as a single raid-zone of which there have been dozens.
So yeah, PvP doesn’t necessarily require anywhere near as much new content as PvE.
That said, the next patch should contain some changes that will hopefully make WvW more interesting.
And don’t get too worried about WvW participation. It will rise again once people have become accustomed to the new features, which typically only takes a week or so. If there had actually been any significant balance changes Wvw might have never taken a dip.
1. Unite all 4 WvW maps into a single WvW map roughly 4 times the size of the current Eternal Battleground.
2. A Portal to the EB Jumping Puzzle is only accessible from inside Stormmist Keep.
To be honest, that’s the only significant change I’d undertake because that alone solves many of the issues I have. Towers and positioning become more important, Siege can’t fire from one Tower to the next if the map is big enough and in general things slow down a bit.
I’d also limit resurrecting to “out of combat” only but that doesn’t really have anything to do with map design.
I might also get rid of some of the Guard posts and instead increase the number of patrols.
I think mobs and a little bit of PvE is actually quite good since that’s a big part of what sets WvW apart from regular PvP.
Yeah I was wondering which professions might be able to be viable by going for an “all stats” build because the number of items is growing.
We have a Karka earring, Amulets and two rings. More will probably come in the future.
But I assume Elementalists and maybe Guardians are the only ones who might consider such a build.
They need to absolutely step up the rate of change in this game.
1. There is relatively little PvP content. We have 1 mode and 5 maps. However this mode is far from fun, particularly because of class balance issues.
Small changes would be acceptable if the core game-play was fun and working. But currently it’s not.
2. PvP should be the focal point of balancing. Unlike WoW where PvE performance mattered, it doesn’t matter much in GW2. Without cutting edge PvE content and performance evolution there’s no need to focus too much on PvE balance. If some classes are OP in PvE nobody really cares.
3. If you consider WvW the current “endgame” then that too is fundamentally a PvP setting. So another reason to make PvP the focal point of balancing.
4. Content wise, GW2 doesn’t have all that much going on. So class changes are one of the few ways to keep the game fresh and interesting. Constant iteration is one of the aspect that keeps MMOs alive for so long.
5. GW2s flexible weapon/ability design protects players from bad balance decisions. If one trait, build or ability got a hefty nerf, then just pick another. Unlike WoW or other MMOs, GW2 players can easily switch out under-powered abilities should they find them over-nerfed.
TL;DR – We need more balance changes because a) PvP should be the focal point, b) it keeps things fresh and c) because you can’t break anything.
Realistically though most modern pistols have a range of roughly 50 yards before bullet drop and swirl makes them highly inaccurate and non-lethal.
An English Longbow on the other hand could hit targets up to 200 yards away.
Obviously none of this really matters in this context but it does give some perspective.
Currently Mug is a big part of the “ZOMG Thief instant-gibbed me” combo.
What if instead of extra burst damage, Mug applied 5 Bleeds to the target?
Not only would this reduce burst damage significantly without hurting sustainable DPS, it would also thematically suit the Deadly Arts tree better which is more about Venoms/Conditions than burst.
Sure…when we take away all the other classes’ class specific damage abilities…starting with warriors. Have you seen the damage warriors do?
Use some common sense. People who use Mug are NOT all playing ermergad steal c&d bs to kill bad players.
Deadly Arts tree is just that…DEADLY ARTS…burst damage suites it perfectly considering it PROVIDES POWER!
Your logic is flawed.
People who use Mug outside of a Backstab build barely do any damage with it. I think it hits for roughly 800 on a typical Condition spec.
Deadly Arts also happens to provide Condition Duration and is thematically about Venoms.
Pistol/Dagger is probably one of the most powerful WvW specs in the game. You generally have lots of targets to Cloak and Dagger off of and your survivability is incredible.
However there is one downside to Pistol/Dagger and that is the relatively short kill window you have in many situations. With people constantly roaming about, people fighting near keeps and friendly NPCs and the general chaos of WvW it can sometimes be hard to actually kill people for good as they start running away once they realize they can’t defeat you.
That and the fact that people in groups will just constantly revive each other will make you pull out your hair.
Currently Mug is a big part of the “ZOMG Thief instant-gibbed me” combo.
What if instead of extra burst damage, Mug applied 5 Bleeds to the target?
Not only would this reduce burst damage significantly without hurting sustainable DPS, it would also thematically suit the Deadly Arts tree better which is more about Venoms/Conditions than burst.
They are still useless outside a heavy venom-traited build.
They are useless because they are so redundant.
Why bother with a dedicated poison when your auto-attacks apply most of the Conditions for free?
When looking at Quaggans, I see slow, peaceful, sluggish and fearsome little creatures with no natural feats providing them with an upper hand.
On the other hand there are myriads of hungry and aggressive creatures living in the seas of Tyria.
How have Quaggans successfully avoided “natural selection” for so long?
Also, do they taste “fishy”?
1.1 GB
the % is based on the amount of files, not the size of files.
Do people not listen to the devs/videos/podcasts? They specifically said that this was gonna be a minor update to pvp and more of a bug/a little balance patch..smh people dont listen
They said this in regards to WvW/PvP content, not about actual balance changes.
If they add new gear/progression or features to WvW, good for them.
But class balance changes aren’t something that needs to be “thematically” timed with a patch.
If there is a gross imbalance of which we have seen plenty over the past months, then it should be fixed asap.
I mean we’ve had essentially the same meta-game for almost 6 months now and it’s getting frikkin boring.