I want to take a moment to discuss the vast discrepancy in base HP between the various professions. At level 80 that would be.
18372 for Warriors and Necromancers
15082 for Engineers, Rangers and Mesmers
10805 for Thieves, Elementalists and Guardians.
In case you haven’t noticed, that’s a HUGE difference in survivability just from the base HP. A Warrior has 80% more HP than an Elementalist aside from more armor etc.
I believe such an extreme difference in a stat as basic as Hit Points makes balancing unnecessarily difficult for the developers.
I mean how do you balance something like Thief Backstabs when it takes 40% HP off one profession and 80% off of another?
How do you balance boss abilities in PvE when one profession loses half of his HP in a single hit while most others are being one-shot?
There are plenty of other elements in game (armor, build, gear, etc.) that can help define your survivability. I don’t think having such a gaping difference in base HP is all that great of an idea.
Just as a reminder, WoW used to have vastly different HP pools between different classes too but dumped that concept eventually for the reasons noted above.
And let’s be honest, we wouldn’t tolerate and 80% difference (or 40%, depending on your POV) on any other stat in the game, so why this huge difference in base HP?
Mt proposal would simply be to curb the extreme differences between base HP and close them to a 2000 HP gap. That would leave the base HP as follows.
18.000 – Warriors and Necromancers
16.000 – Rangers, Engineers and Mesmers
14.000 – Thieves, Elementalists and Guardians.
I realize this might need some short-term rebalancing in certain areas but long-term I’m sure it would be better for the game.
So cheesy Mesmer can keep you locked in fight by spaming their Phantasms in the JP….thus preventing you from doing any of the jumps.
It’s actually more of a balancing mechanism I assume but ideally it wouldn’t be necessary.
I’m fine with the PvP in the JP, but people sitting at the top of the arena (especially Mesmers) who just spam their Phantasms or even build an Arrow cart just to keep people in combat so they can’t make the jumps, that’s kitten
People should ALWAYS have the opportunity to fight back. This isn’t the case inside the Arena.
I’ve run my fair share of Arah explorable. Here’s my advice:
1. Roll with a Shortbow (or Pistol) most of the time and only switch to Melee when things are under control. Sword/Dagger however can be good for locking down casters.
2. For trash I tend to use Scorpion Wire as you can single out a lot of mobs by pulling them separately without adding the group. If you group lets you pull and isn’t too hasty you can make life A LOT easier for everyone. It won’t work on every group however.
3. My second utility skill tends to be smoke screen as not only does it apply Blind to targets you hit while shooting through, it also blocks all projectile and enemy spells passing through it. Depending on the fight, this can be incredibly useful.
4. Shadow Refuge is an Ability I almost never exchange and I use on every spec I play. It’s just that useful because it allows you to rezz people safely and bypass mobs in certain areas. Just make sure everyone stands in the Refuge for the full 4 second duration.
5. For Giganticus Lupius I tend to mix it up a little. I replace “Hide in the Shadows” with “Withdraw” for the extra Dodge and add “Roll for Initiative” and “Singet of Shadow”. I tried using Pistols but really missed the extra Dodges form the Shortbow and the damage didn’t seem that much higher.
6. Regarding gear, damage is absolutely secondary in most PvE situations. You’ll want at least 16000 HP and at least a little Toughness. The more, the better. Pack a vierty of different foods too, some to improve you Stamina regeneration and some you just generally like.
PS: The Projectile Reflect on Daggerstoms makes it the perfect tool to pull ranged mobs.
Sounds like the OP was on the receiving end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/das_captcha?next=/watch%3Fv%3DzmwXAFbFQiQ%26feature%3Dyoutu.be%26pxtry%3D1
I’d say:
-1 Thief for mass-cloaking and bursting down a single target
-1 Bunker Guardian for drawing most of the attention. Send him in first.
-1 Warrior with a Hammer, for stunning lots of people who can then be bursted down by the group.
-1 Mesmer because Mesmers are the best profession in game and excel at everything.
-1 Anything…..Elementalist would work, but so would anything else.
If they get the jump on you you won’t have much of a chance.
The key is to jump them….while avoid being jumped yourself. If you can catch them off guard, preferably with CC/stuns…then it should be a pretty easy win.
I sort of agree with the OP.
My problem is that there is hardly any difficulty progression throughout Dungeons. Aside from Arah, no Dungeon is really harder than the next.
Hell, some Story Modes feels harder than explorables.
The thing is, once you’ve beaten one explorable mode….none of the others are going to be significantly harder. Some paths might be harder to coordinate or require some tricky puzzle but the fights themselves are all more of less the same difficulty.
Like most people I too am grinding away at my Legendary.
And although I’ve still got a way to go I can already tell that money, not Karma is going to be my limiting factor.
Hence I’m wondering if and how might be the most effective way of turning my excess Karma into something I can make money with?
I can see where the OP is coming from.
1. It’s a huge step up from your normal PvE experience into your first Story Mode dungeon. Mobs have a lot of HP, bosses hit HARD and you still haven’t learned the basics of group play.
2. The difference in difficulty between Story Mode and Explorable Mode is hardly noticeable. Sure, some mechanics may be less forgiving in Explorable Mode or require better tactics but Story Mode can still be quite challenging. I can understand why people would find the learning curve to be rather steep.
Lupius is one of these bosses you really have to look at closely. Once you have understood his abilities and movement patterns he’s very doable.
There are some minor tweaks I’d like to see though.
1. Receiving damage even when outside of the red circles. This is annoying and doesn’t make sense.
2. Random and unavoidable damage he throws around at random for 11-15k damage. Is that really necessary? Do we really need that kind of damage thrown about at random?
3. Maybe 20% less HP. Phase 2 is the real crux of the fight. The others phases are rather easy and tend to drag on a little too long for my liking (especially if you have lousy ranged DPS).
I was looking at some of the dungeons sets about an hour ago and noticed some weird inconsistencies with the price-tags on some items, especially the “Sorrow’s Embrace” sets.
Some light armor pants were priced at 180 tokens while others cost 300.
I believe some of the chest-pieces were even priced at 180 tokens while at least one pair of gloves cost 200+ tokens.
It didn’t make much sense considering the items had the same stats as the AC gear set.
I just did path 1 a few hours ago so it’s definitely possible.
I don’t really know what the "normal"way is since it was my first time down this path. The Constant respawn was annoying but could be dealt with using a few tricks.
Pressing ALT + 1 will halt your auto attack.
Press it again to commence.
Well the thing that limits Condition builds imo is the fact that quite often you won’t have all that much time to apply your damage. Sometimes you need to pick off a straddler before he reaches his zerg or the closest keep. Sometimes you might just want to pick someone out of the nemy Zerg or quickly destroy a Siege operator.
That’s where burst is just conceptionally better than DoTs even if it is less stronger in a straight-up fight.
I used to like playing Dot-classes, namingly a Shadowpriest during most of my WoW time. I was really good at it too.
However I always felt that mana was a rather obnoxious resource system and never really quite worked. It also really held you back in PvP. I then went through a Warrior phase in early Cataclysm and later on in SWTOR where I rolled a DPS Guardian.
I like the upfront and visceral play-style of the Warrior archetype and still do today.
However for some reason the Warrior in GW2 never really got me all that excited. Maybe I wanted more independence or just a different play-style. Anyway, I settled on the Thief pretty early on and have never really changed my mind about it since then.
Yes, it used to do more damage when detonated, but I don’t know what changed.
Now it’s certainly more effective to let it impact the ground. That also has the added benefit of triggering combo-fields.
I agree that Legendaries need something more unique about them than just the skin.
I was thinking:
#A unique Sigil proc that can’t be found anywhere else. They don’t have to be better or worse than normal Sigil procs, just something that suits the weapon.
#Allow players to customize the stat distribution on the particular weapon. For example you could chose which primary and which two secondary stats your Legendary has by changing the order in which you place the Gifts into the Mystic Forge.
ANet has implied certain specific changes on multiple occasions without going into detail. We also have some official info to go on.
Hence I wanted to hear what you’re expecting from the “Lost Shore” patch due for November 15th.
#Content
-A level 80 zone, filled with new events and loot.
-A new Dungeon. Probably harder and better designed than current ones.
#Game changes
-A “fix” to the Precursor issue. Either an alternative way to receive or increased drop-rates. Anyhow, they should become a lot more abundant.
-Something to discourage people from farming Plinx non-stop. Maybe by making the “Lost Shore” more attractive or directly nerfing the Plinx chain.
-Possibly a new WvW scoring algorithm, but unlikely.
-Minor UI enhancements.
-Ability to salvage Karma gear.
-Adjustments to mob-respawn rate.
#Balance
-A Nerf to Thief Burst builds. Probably by nerfing Mug.
-A Nerf to Guardian Bunker builds.
-Various profession changes.
-Buffs to Rangers.
-Revised Underwater Combat.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
Clusterbomb is a great ability, there’s no doubt about it.
However the animation, especially the projectile itself is incredibly and unrealistically slow. I know it arcs which increases the travel-time compared to an auto-attack but the speed itself is still very slow.
This makes “tagging” mobs during Dynamic Events somewhat difficult at times and makes the ability feel a little unresponsive at times.
Can we please “speed up” the projectile speed of Clusterbomb by at least 50%. It would make it feel a little “snappier”.
Aim your Shadowstep behind enemies for an extra few seconds of confusion.
It also allows you to easily pass some of the mini-games/puzzles ANet put into some of the Dungeons.
Remember the lazer barriers in the Crucible of Eternity? A quick Infiltrator’s Arrow + Shadowstep will allow you to bypass it in a matter of seconds.
I mean you can instantly teleport almost anywhere within 1200 Range. How is that not useful?
I hate the downed-state as much as most people here. I see it’s necessary for PvE but it’s detrimental to PvP.
While I’d like to see it removed or completely reworked, two simple changes would make it at least somewhat bearable.
- Any direct damage (not condition damage ticks) should interrupt a rezzurection process. That means anyone, even players without a knock-down or daze can interrupt a rezzurection. That should at least curb the idiocy of near instant rezzing in group fights.
- Reviving a dead player should only be possible out of combat. This would limit the extent to which people can rezz dead players in Siege situations and actually give defenders a reasonable chance of fending off an attack.
Yeah, downed-state leads to some really absurd and stupid situations. Sure, sometimes it benefits you but it’s always pretty dumb.
What bugs me more about it than the somewhat random rallying though is that somebody can simply be rezzed through all kinds of damage if enough people click on him.
My main set is Power/Toughness/Vitality which is supplemented by Berserker’s Accessories.
This gives me a nice balance of survivability and damage for both WvW and PvE.
Power also has the beneficial side-effect that it increases all your damage, including critical hits. That’s why it’s the best DPS stat to stack.
Mesmer,
because anything other classes can do, Mesmer do better.
They can do anything other can do.
Yes they can!
Removing downed state or at least making heals/resurrections break on damage would be good enough for me.
It pains me to see this every time.
But about 70% of Rangers I encounter in WvW will insist on shooting at a Thief who is Daggerstorming, killing themselves in the process.
It’s just so incredibly easy to avoid but most Rangers just seem to be really bad.
Anyway, here’s some free advice.
Edit: Maybe I should explain why. Daggerstorm reflects Projectiles back to where they came from. So anyone shooting at it with ranged weapons is going to be eating their own damage (including Ballistas).
I was just pondering this as I believe it’s a bit on an issue with Thieves already very limited arsenal.
Currently there are two basic play-styles for Thieves. One focuses on Condition Damage, the other on burst damage, mainly from Critical Strikes. There is very little synergy between to two so most people opt for one or the other.
However our attacks suffer from this divide as well. Death Blossom for example doesn’t offer much for a Burst build but is the staple attack for D/D Condition Builds. This works the other way too with Backstab for example hitting for much, much less with a Condition Damage build, rendering it near useless for the build.
The problem I have with this divide is that it further limits our already very limited ability choices.
Instead of having 5 viable attacks to chose from, almost every weapon set hat 1…sometimes 2 abilities that are rendered obsolete because of our build.
Hence I pose the question, would you rather have clear-cut Condition/Burst damage weapon sets or do you like the current system?
What I mean by that is if you’d like to see certain weapon sets built entirely for a specific play-style? Pistol/Dagger might be entirely Condition Damage, Dagger/Dagger might be purely Burst damage etc.
I know all professions suffer from this issue to a certain extent but I believe it weighs heavier on Thieves because a) out limited arsenal and b) Initiative doesn’t force us to use inefficient abilities due to others being on cooldown.
Or whatever, no matter what people or Anet says its WRONG that 30 alarm clockers can GAIN MORE points with less time and effort then 500 can during “prime” “times”
This fked up point system is one of the main reasons alot of WvW players stopped / are stopping.
And this is the true crux that so many people ignored/refused to understand. Night capping was never about “forcing everyone to play during my time”.
It was the fact that having 20 more players online at the right hours allowed to you basically sweep the entire map, rendering any previous achievement worthless.
The actions of a few (online at the right time) outweigh the actions of the many (online during prime-time) tenfold.
That’ the real issue with night-capping. And ANet has never responded to it.
Things are surprisingly balanced score-wise, especially if Gunnar’s Hold dominates tonight, as they seem to be.
It seems like Abaddon has caps a lot early during the day (Germans probably have earlier shifts) before the international servers come on and start pushing back. Night time tends to be dominated by either Gunnar or Piken.
The next scheduled content patch is on the 15th of November.
Aside from that they seem to apply bug-fix/bug-implementation patches every Tuesday.
Occasionally we’ll have a few hotfixes too like we did during the Halloween Event.
I see where the OP is coming from.
I always felt that being a member of a guild was like being a member of a family. A commitment to your fellow players for whatever reasons. The whole multi-guild system never made sense to me and I never understood what problem ANet was trying to fix by implementing it.
It’s like they wanted to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with.
With the multi-guild system and easy server transfers social ties in GW2 are just as lose and liberal as they were in WoW, just for different reasons.
Backstab glass-cannons get owned hard by Hammer Warriors or Guardians since a single stun can be chained into another and result in your helpless death.
Some might say this is the price you have to pay for playing a glass-cannon but in fact using your ranged weapon makes one hell of a difference. A lot of Warriors and Guardians especially don’t like using ranged weapons so the Shortbow is really good for keeping them at a safe distance.
I have a couple of issues with the current loot system.
1. Blues and Greens are too abundant they they aren’t appreciated unless leveling. Most of them are vendored directly as the market is flooded with these items.
2. Yellows (rare) are the only items that feel somewhat rewarding and that’s because you can salvage them for Ectoplasms.
3. You are more likely to get these rares from farming mobs during events rather than actually doing challenging content.
4. All mobs seem to share the same loot table. Fighting Veterans or Elites is highly inefficient and thus, unrewarding compared to AoEing down a group of mobs instantly.
5. Exotics are relatively easy to affordable to purchase compared to grinding out the gear in Dungeons. With a price of 2-3 Gold per item it’s not that expensive to get exactly what you want.
____________________________________________
If they wanted to address these issues here’s what they should do.
1. Remove the chance for regular mobs to drop rare items. They should only drop blue and the occasional green item.
2. Veteran and Elite mobs should have a chance of dropping either green or yellow items.
3. Chests should also drop green or yellow items.
4. Add a MF bonus to mobs that have been alive for a long time. The longer a mob remains unkilled, the higher the chance to drop something good. This is to promote and reward exploration off the beaten track.
5. Remove MF gear from the game.
I’m sorry, I play an Asura.
Can you actually see your Daggers?
I never felt that Pistol Whip was anywhere near as good as D/D because of the self-root. I know people succeeded with it but I never liked it.
Should D/D lose it’s USP I’d probably opt for Sword/Dagger since it’s fairly similar in play-style, just without the burst.
Mesmers have so much potential for griefing it’s really unfair towards other professions.
They can keep spaming their Phantasms while out of LOS, constantly damaging you and keeping you locked in combat. Add their AoE push/pull ability, their portals for running away when things don’t go their way and invisibility and voila…
…the perfect profession for Griefers and Gankers.
People are currently obsessed with their hate for Thieves. Mesmers have been flying under the radar for too long though.
All allied NPCs are a terrible nuisance in the instances. Not only are they mostly useless and contribute nothing to the fight, they also prevents bosses from resetting and cause various other issues and generally just get in the way.
That’s why I try to keep the NPCs dead for as long as possible.
I really haven’t encountered too many bugs in Dungeons, except for a few *but those were major). I also don’t share the OPs sentiments, although he does bring up some fair points.
1. Both bosses and trash mobs seemed to be designed for double the current DPS. Their HP….not always, but often, seems way excessive. This is especially noticeable if the mobs don’t have any special mechanics because it means you’re auto-shotting most of the time. Oozes are notorious offenders in this regard. Nothing but tedious damage sponges that split after you kill them to mock you further and waste more of your time.
2. Personally I really love the mini-games and events you have in the Dungeons. They emphasize the group vs. the dungeons experience rather than making it a loot pinata.
3. Rewards are quite poor, I agree. I believe that finishing an Instance should reward at least one yellow drop at the end. You could counter this inflation by removing rare drops from regular (non veteran/elite) mobs.
4. One shot mechanics are far too common. I don’t mind dying but I like to know how and why I died and what I’m supposed to do to avoid it. Simply dropping dead the moment you enter melee range without any form of visual or game-play feedback is very frustrating.
However overall I’m quite content with Dungeons, even if many of the mechanics are dodgy, buggy or lackluster. I’m finding that dungeons success is directly related to the skill of the players.
Especially considering one of the Thieves heals stealths them for a few seconds (even if it’s not the best heal to use in this fight).
What bugs me more about the fight is the erratic and random damage he sometimes throws at seemingly random targets just for lulz, which hits for 12-15k. With the red circles and all the other crap flying around don’t see why we need these random, unpredictable 5-digit hits flying around.
Well since the cooldown on Steal is quite lengthy you’re naturally forced to fight without it occasionally.
I know Backstab in itself isn’t OP and I’ve tried to get this message across here on these boards. But people seem obsessed with it just because it deals the highest damage.
I saw a screenshot of an 11k Backstab and a 6k Steal on the other boards just a few moments ago. Imo the 6k Steal is far more broken than Backstab.
I just hope ANet gets the message and fixes the cause, rather than the symptoms.
There are no “rotations”.
There are merely some abilities that synergize with each other. Hence it makes sense to use them consecutively.
Examples are: Cloak & Dagger + Backstab , Charge stun + 100 Blades etc.
(edited by Dee Jay.2460)
The 6k Steal is probably more broken than the 11k Backstab.
I really don’t see the need for a damage meter without content that requires high DPS.
It makes sense if you have cutting edge raid content but without, there’s really no need as long as professions are balanced in themselves.
Adding damage meters would just make people QQ for the wrong reasons. They’ll realize Warriors do the most damage…..and they’ll demand to draw even, without understanding that DPS is one of many sides of a specific profession.
People like to boil down profession performance into a single metric. I wouldn’t even give them the opportunity.
Yes, aside from the bad build the OP posted I share his assessment.
The problem is not Backstab…it’s the combo.
Well it’s not entirely fair,
the lack of cutting-edge PvE content really limits the extent to which you need to discuss builds and tactics. Without the need for theorycrafting or tactics discussions there really isn’t much left to talk about on the PvE side.
In PvP there are a few more dynamics…but again…without a ladder or any kind of performance evaluation everything is just going to be anecdotal experiences.
That’s why a large extent of the discussion here is focused on either Thief QQ or discussing some of the fundamental mechanics of the class.
So know the fotm is to recruit American guilds to play on EU servers and vice-versa.
That’s what you get for doing nothing about night-capping.
Great foresight…
I doubt cross-atlantic server transfers are as wide-spread as people make them out to be but even a single dedicated overseas guild can make a huge difference in a servers night performance.
They have different teams working of different types of content. So dedicating everything towards fixing a single problem isn’t really a viable option.
That said, I agree that the constant bugging of events and dungeons is by far the biggest problem GW2 has had since release. To be honest, I don’t ever recall an MMO that had such wide-spread and omnipresent issues.