Guild Wars 2

The key to avoiding frustration is to have players understand what went wrong and how to fix it.

I agree about the “passive aggressive” nature of much of the vocal community here.

And yes, a lot of people can’t maturely discuss anything WoW related in an objective and unbiased manner. They are just too enticed by how ANet wanted to be different and can’t see/admit that WoW does actually have some redeeming qualities.

For example only yesterday I made a point about how encounter design in GW2 could learn a lot from WoW’s in terms of mechanics and pacing. Needless to say it didn’t go down too well.

What happened to all the French Canadians?

As I see it, the only language without a significant overseas population are the Germans.

Yeah….that’s just one of the dozes of examples why downed-state is such a terrible and frustrating mechanic.

I’d love the PvP 10-times more if it weren’t for the stupid downed-state.

Profession changes will probably never come and rightly so.

1. Character level is meaningless in a lot of GW2s content. So I really can’t imagine there being a huge demand for a paid profession change.

2. Re-rolling is a huge part of MMO content. ANet would be undermining much of their game if they allowed people to instantly switch professions.

I agree that Health pools in this game are out of whack in many cases with a lot of bosses having way too many HP.

However I’ll add that large health pools can sometimes be part of the difficulty.

Lupius for example, while being somewhat lengthy….does draw a portion of its difficulty from the fact that you have to uphold the Phase 2 shenanigans for quite some time.

But for every Lupius there are dozens of other bosses where I can watch TV while dodging the odd red circle every 10 seconds or so. That’s not cool.

I have to say, World of Warcraft has really distilled the essence of good encounter design. Just look at that game, how the fights are designed, the mechanics, the build-up, the emotes etc. ANet can learn a lot from that.

In theory, Magic Find makes sense.

You sacrifice a lot of your damage/survivability for an increased chance to receive better loot. In theory the game is now “harder” and so your reward is better. Essentially Magic Find is supposed to increase the risk/reward factor.

But it really doesn’t work like that in practice.

The main use of Magic Find is for grinding events with large numbers of other people, making them no challenge whatsoever. That’s why the “sacrifice” you make isn’t really relevant. In Dungeons, something that should fundamentally be a cooperative experience, people are encouraged to kitten their own performance for the sake of more/better loot.

It was already a problematic stat in Diablo III and that game was essentially about farming. Guild Wars 2 is about more than just farming and I think the Magic Find stat really has no place in such a game.

Keep the booster, keep the food if you must, even the Runes would be bearable….but remove the rest of the Magic Find stat from gear.

Yes, that’s why I tend to shoot him for about 20 seconds and then walk off and do something else.

GW2 has a general problem with balancing Mob HP in various situations. It’s not limited to this Champion.

1. Most normal mobs during DE have way too little HP to pose a threat to large (10+) groups of players. At times it can be hard to tag mobs because they die so fast. This is especially an issue in the Cursed Shore Events.

2. Some Champions and Bosses have a tedious amount of HP, while lacking engaging mechanics. This is true for Dungeons as much as it is true elsewhere. Long fights are ok, especially in dungeons….if they are engaging. But doing the same dance for 5+ Minutes is really not ok.

There are countless bosses in Dungeons that wouldn’t be significantly easier with half the HP they have currently. But the fact that we have to blast through their massive HP pools is just tedious.

That’s why I’m farming for the Dreamer, not the Incinerator.

That, and I know I’ll be using the Shortbow for a long, long time to come. Daggers may easily end up nerfed.

I think they could do a lot more with Initiative than they are currently doing. It could contribute way more towards balancing the Thief while being an engaging mechanic.

1. Why not have Stealth consume Initiative rather than being on a fixed timer? It would promote the defensive nature of Stealth and would limit the ability to dump all your Initiative on an unsuspecting target.

Instead you’d have to manage your Initiative and damage more wisely, rather than just spam your most effective ability. Of course this would force some abilities to be redesigned. C&D couldn’t cost 5 Initiative in such a system.

2. Initiative should generate slower, the less you have. Other MMORPGs (like SWTOR) had a system like that and it really rewarded active resource management over constant spamming. Managing your resource level while still outputting a lot of damage was quite a quality. GW2 could learn a lot from that.

For Dungeons you really want to have a ranged option at all times. The Shortbow is good but so is Pistol/Dagger or Pistol/Pistol.

In fact, if you’re running a condition build then Dagger/Dagger + Pistol/Dagger might be your best choice since both evolve around Condition Damage.

Carrion gear is the most obvious choice since Condition Damage, Power and Vitality will all prove useful to you. I’d like to add that a little Toughness isn’t too shabby either. Not worth stacking but even a little gives quite a substantial damage reduction. However the 300 Toughness you get from the Shadow Arts tree might suffice.

But…and this is quite a big deal in PvE…what really limits Condition Builds in PvE is the Bleed stack limit. One Bleed Necro in your group could seriously kitten your DPS on Boss fights.

One dedicated Bleed build will often occupy close to 15 Bleed stacks by itself. Other group members may be adding Bleeds of their own meaning you’ll reach the 25 Bleed cap very quickly. It shouldn’t really impair your progress but it will limit your performance.

As for PvP, Bleed builds, especially Pistol/Dagger, are really good in small controlled situations like sPvP etc. I can frequently 1v2 with my P/D build, something that’s hard to do with your classic D/D setup.

But things are different in WvW. With so much stuff going on you generally have very small kill-windows. That’s where D/D burst really pays off. You might have more fun with P/D Condition Builds when ganking people in the Jumping Puzzle but in big Zerg fights….D/D burst builds will net you far more kills.

I think it would be really helpful if GW2 displayed a number in our targeting window showing exactly how much HP our target has.

1. In PvP this would allow us to judge the spec we’re fighting against very quickly. We could identify a glass-cannon immediately and react accordingly. Currently you have to fall for every one-trick-pony once before you know what spec they are.

If people could quickly identify a Backstab Thief or a 100-Blades Warrior then maybe they’d be more able to counter them.

2. In PvE it would allow us to filter out the glass-cannons from our groups. I’ve had many a dungeon fall apart because people kept dying all while assuming they were specced as glass-cannons. Of course having an “inspect” feature would be even better, but this alone might be simpler to implement.

I’d say downed state too,

it has resulted in so many cheesy, frustrating and ridiculous situations I sometimes wonder why I even bother fighting more than 1v1.

Yes, I was thinking too that the removal of Orbs might reduce the amount of Thief hate on these boards substantially.

After all, 150 less stats and 15% less HP on any profession will have a noticeable impact.

I’m sorry but I’m going to have to disagree with Asum’s entire sentiment regarding the Thief class.

It’s probably the spammiest, “user-friendly” and straight-forward class in game.

Yes, there is skill to playing a Thief and Stealth opens up quite a few tactical options but the ability and profession design itself is very straight-forward and not “deep”.

My suggestion would add such depth without fundamentally altering the play-style.

However if we disagree on such a fundamental level of how well the Thief class is designed, then I doubt we’ll have a very constructive debate.

Another hour of Plinx today with nothing to show for it.

I’ve been using Karma boosters for the first time this week and all it seems to do is to lower your Magic Find and increase the rate at which you hit Diminishing Returns.

I’m not longer willing to put this off to pure bad luck. Not when it’s an hour a day…spread out over multiple days.

I’ll be running without Karma Boosters next time and see how that affects loot.

Buy the “Omnomberry Bar” recipe from the TP and sell them for solid profits.

The Bots always switch to the dominating server. Just do everyone a favor and kill them from time to time.

I agree with the OP.

As an example, Assassin’s Singet, a 50% damage increase on a single attack, was somehow deemed overpowered, yet a 100% DPS increase is somehow ok?

No matter the downsides, Quickness just leads to absurd burst situations which this game really doesn’t need any more of.

SWTOR had a very interesting energy system for their “Rogue” class (aka. Operative/Smuggler).

It too utilized an energy system, not unlike the Initiative system Thieves use in GW2.

But unlike previous energy system, the one in SWTOR regenerated faster, the higher it was.

For example, if your energy level was >70%, energy replenished at a rate of 5/second.

If it was between 70 and 40, it replenished at a rate of 3/second

And if it was below 40…at a rate of 2/second.

The clue was that you needed to maintain a high energy level to maximize your long-term DPS, while still having the option to dump a lot of your energy if need be.

I believe a similar system might prove useful towards balancing Thieves in the long term. Currently Initiative regenerates at a rate of 1 every 1.1 seconds (or vice versa).

If ANet made it so that the we’d generate Initiative at a slower rate when low, and a higher rate when high, it might result in some interesting and less spammy game-play.

Knock yourself out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0At7RT8CCLILIdC1fcjdRZmJYemt4RllPdl9GWEpnMFE&output=html

I like:

-Flexible build system, rather than specs.
-Mists for experimenting
-Three way WvW

Dislike
-Too many extreme builds. Either extreme damage or extreme survivability.
-Downed state and rezz mechanics
-WvW split up into 4 “different” maps
-Lack of game-play/map variety.

Toughness is better the more Vitality you have and vice versa. You really want to be mixing the two. In general, Vitality is slightly better for Thieves although a little Toughness goes a long way.

So essentially I’d get: “A lot of Vitality” and “a little Toughness”.

That said, if you’re going for a Condition Damage build…..you should stack Condition Damage, not Power. Power doesn’t improve Condition Damage the way it does Critical Strikes.

Imo you should go Condition Damage > Vitality > Power/Toughness

So I logged in this morning and did an hours of Plinx grinding in the Cursed Shore. I generally don’t do more than an hour at once every other day or so because of the Karma DR and general boredom.

I did this with my standard MF set…which, including Omnomberry Bar….should reach roughly 150% MF. With this set I was accustomed to getting a rare roughly every 2nd event or so. Maybe 1-2 per Plinx chain.

However today I went the entire hour without a single rare drop. Not only that….loot in general was scarce. My bags were never fully at the end of a run. There was always plenty of space left. Something that wasn’t typically the case.

The thing is….the past week in general Plinx runs have been very unrewarding in terms of drops. Hence I’m wondering if there has been any changes made to the Diminishing Returns formula or if I might be running into some other kind of “soft barrier”.

Of course it’s entirely possible that this is down to pure bad luck….but after a few hours you’d expect things to normalize.

Rubbish,

I doubt anything will really change. Most people never really grasped the whole Orbs concept anyway.

Run speed is capped at 133%. So it doesn’t matter what effects you stacked as long as you had Quickness. Only the best effect counts.

Assuming the Thief had the 25% passive speed increase he could have used his Shortbow and other Shadowstep abilities to gain on you. But he can’t really spam them so yeah…..how long was he chasing you?

Some abilities are really lackluster.

1. Body Shot above all, seems to be very underwhelming and not interesting in the slightest.

2. I really, really despise the 900 Range limit we currently have. I can barely shoot up a wall at times. Please bump up our ranged weapons to at least 1000, maybe more.

3. Traps are situational and rarely a really good choice. If you want them to be viable, make them more powerful.

4. Some 3rd slot abilities like Flanking Strike really aren’t all that exciting.

5. Personally I’d like to see a few more abilities that allow us to Stealth. Currently C&D seems to be the only ability that does that.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Backstab itself is not OP. The damage, while high, is justified in most situations.

What is OP however is the “Backstab combo” consisting of Steal + Mug + Cloak and Dagger + Backstab + Assassin’s Singet and/or Haste + _Assassin’s Reward + all the various traits that proc when using Steal.

There is an awful lot more to the Backstab combo than Backstab itself. There are also much smarter ways to nerf it than simply adjusting the damage, which would completely ruin it in PvE.

I propose:

-Change Assassin’s Reward trait to something less “bursty”
-Don’t allow people to use Steal during a cast
-Nerf Mug slightly. It seems to deal an awful lot of damage in some specs.

I will speak up against unjustified nerfs.

But for now I remain silent.

I agree with the OP,

I think a general problem in current profession balance is that the popular builds tend to one extreme or another.

I understand wanting to give every weapon a unique flavor and play-style but I believe ANet pushed it to an extreme.

For example, a glass-cannon Thief or Warrior can kill an unprepared enemy in a matter of 2 seconds. A more balanced build will need at least 10-15 seconds, probably more. That’s a very extreme difference.

On the other end of the spectrum, an appropriately specced Elementalist can end up having 10 times more survivablity than a “balanced” Elementalist build. Same applies to Guardians who can push their suvivability to an extreme.

This applies to weapons as well, but to a lesser extent. I get that Hammers are about stuns. but must that mean up to 10 seconds of chain-stuns?

In general, ANet needs to tone down the extremes on each end of the spectrum. Burst certainly should have it’s place, but maybe it should take at least 4-5 seconds to kill somebody.

Tanking too should be a viable build, but maybe not the ability to survive 3 players for almost a minute.

Edit: Maybe the lack of Diminishing Returns on some stats is to blame for this.

Yay….I was really hoping to see less sharks. It’s good to see our voices were heard.

This wasn’t about spamming Heartseeker. This is about how incredibly “user friendly” the ability is. It’s very easy to apply damage with Heartseeker thanks to the 450 Range and the “seeking” aspect of it.

And that’s why I think Thieves are so accessible. Giving them something that requires a little more finesse and skill to use would go a long way towards adding a little more depth to the profession.

That’s all I’m trying to say. I couldn’t care less about people who spam it.

There isn’t really an “end game” in Guild Wars 2 unless you consider farming a Legendary endgame.

So nothing fundamentally changes once you hit 80.

There are two fundamentally different ways to build a Thief.

One focuses on Critical Strikes, the other on Condition Damage. Both are viable, although more so in different environments. Both builds have synergy with the _ Deadly Arts_ tree with Condition build benefiting from the Venom enhancements and Critical Strike benefiting from the damage increases.

Survivability is a matter of personal preference and experience and the only thing you might really want to reconsider at 80 when farming explorable modes will become a common past-time.

Generally I recommend you invest heavily into at least one “defensive” tree, aka Shadow Arts or Acrobatics. You should also use gear that has more than just Power, Precision and Critical Damage. Otherwise you’ll be in constant need of a rezz in Dungeons since a lot of damage is virtually unavoidable.

I’ll add a replacement suggestion to give an example of what might be a better choice.

“Exploit Weakness”

Evade to the sides, stabbing your Foe in an vulnerable spot.
Deals 600 damage + 40 for every Stack of Vulnerability on the target.
Range: 200
Cost: 4 Initiative

Why is this better?
1. Vulnerability is a condition, something the Thief would need to watch and react to.
2. Vulnerability is a condition that typically doesn’t stack very high in PvP situations, thus limiting the burst potential.
3. Getting use out of the “Evade” component requires explicit timing.
4. The limited 200 range make it harder to apply compared to Heartseeker.
5. The 4 Initiative cost make it less prone to spam, emphasizing timing over button mashing.

There are many issues surrounding the thief class, Backstab burst, culling issues etc. that are all worthy of discussion.

However I feel one aspect is ignored although it is the prime reason why Thieves are such a “noob friendly” class.

What I mean with this is that you can achieve a lot more on a Thief with minimal effort than you could with any other profession. The Thief actually has a fairly decent skill-cap, but it’s overshadowed by the fact that anyone can make a Thief and still be reasonably successful.

And I believe a big reason for that is Heartseeker.

Not so much the damage (although it can be excessively high when combined with _ Executioner_ and other Critical Damage traits) but rather the fact that it’s auto-targeting with a 450 range.

That makes the ability very easy to apply, especially if you consider that the 3 Initiative make it almost spamable.

I also think this ability is the reason why people feel Thieves are cheesy because they most often will die to multiple Heartseekers in rapid succession which just looks really cheesy I have to admit.

I believe that changing Heartseeker is a good way to not only increase the “finesse requirements” on Thieves but also make it feel less cheesy to players who die to Thieves.

Rehk.6574:

I’d really like someone to post the actual values for dmg and healing values of each sigil so we can get a better comparison.

Knowing the approximate dmg / healing range of each sigil is kind of nessicery to determine their actual worth.

Here you are:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10o4mi/the_damage_formula_and_the_efficiency_of_sigils/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10ilke/how_sigils_work/

They really just need to alter some of the burst traits. Assassin’s Reward should be changed as it directly encourages burst-builds.

Steal during C&D is equally burst-encouraging and should probably be prohibited as well.

I don’t think Backstab needs a direct damage nerf as it’s a situational skill.

mjharrison.3209:

Downed state does nothing for the “team” game, all it does is heavily favour numbers over skill.

The side with the greater numbers always wins in an open-field standoff, simply through greater capacity for rezzing.

It sucks.

Rezzing ought to break on any form of damage in PVP zones. That would fix it without being overly punitive.

I agree,

Downed state is incredibly frustrating and imo game-breaking in WvW. It changes the entire dynamic of combat and further favors zerging over anything else.

While I generally dislike the mechanic in PvP having the healing break on damage would fix most of the issues I have with it.

8v8 doesn’t have a meta. It’s just random players.

That said I agree that Thieves are a little too effective in the hands of bad players. They can get further than most with very little effort.

I think they should outline the most pressing issues with each class and publicly explain how they plan to address them. After some feedback they should chose the most intuitive and least intrusive way of buffing/nerfing them.

Using the Thief an an example, Backstab damage isn’t actually the problem. It’s just the most obvious effect of being able to Steal during C&D. Removing that “feature” would do a lot to curb Thief burst without actually changing the numbers.

I find the “on use” heal effect of Malice to be too weak and the lack of condition removal is detrimental.

Malice is ok if if suits your build and you stack a lot of self-healing and fast, frequent attacks. But it only works well if your in a controlled environment.

This isn’t always the case in PvE and never in PvP.

We’d need much more Vitality and many more hitpoints to get much out of SoM. Currently our limited HP pool just doesn’t allow us to wait for a lot of the self-healing to kick in.

I just left the game a few moments ago after experiencing these massive spikes as well.

Not sure where they came from since I haven’t sPvP’d much lately.

EU server, that is, so Sandy can’t really be the issue.

I use Sigil of Air on my Mainhand Dagger and Accuracy on my Off-Hand.

You can only have 1 procc-effect active at a time because most effects share an internal cooldown.

I use Air for my Shortbow as well although there might be better choices out there since the Shortbow isn’t just about dealing damage.

Clever abuse of game-mechanics.

I don’t have an inherent problem with turtleing but obviously the 5 target cap on aoE makes no sense.

Nerf AoE slightly and remove the target cap.

Fixed.

I’d agree if it only had half the amount of players in an instance at the time.

Overall it’s well designed except for that frikkin box/square thing in the way right at the beginning when the wall breaks off. That and the camera randomly zooming in really close really grind my gears.

Mosharn.8357:

should be removed from thief… other classes dont get anything this nice. Its guaranteed to get you the stomp no matter what.

No it doesn’t.

You can still be hit, knocked-back, interrupted and killed while in Stealth.

I do hope they make some serious changes to professions instead of all this tinkering.

Some professions have some pretty fundamental imbalances.

Thieves and their Backstab combo: Stealing while C&D is being cast for example.

Hammer Warriors who can chain-stun you for 10 seconds. 100 Blades is just as stupid as the Backstab combo.

Guardians that are virtually unkillable by single players while still dealing a lot of damage.

Mesmers portals and general raid utility.

Those are just the grossest imbalances. These elements fall out of the typical power spectrum and should be normalized.

Under no circumstances is it ok for people to rezz each other in 3 seconds.

It’s not directly a problem with downed-state and I’m aware of the “kill 3 times then die”.

None of that changes nothing about how incredibly stupid this mechanic is.

I’ve come to find the current rezz mechanics to be the most frustrating and poorly conceived mechanic currently in game. In fact I can’t recall a single feature ever being to detrimental to game-play.

Say for example, it’s getting late at night. You and your 15 fellows are defending a keep from 25 attackers. It’s a big discrepancy but not insurmountable, especially if they are disorganized. Or at least that would be the case if you could actually kill people in this frikkin game. The rezz mechanics are just so incredibly frustrating it makes any attempt at defending against a larger force ultimately futile. The results are pre-determined. All you can do while defending is buy some time….in the hope some larger zerg might come to your aid (which doesn’t happen at night).

I mean how come self-healing abilities have up to 30 second cooldowns yet somebody can pick me up from the ground in a matter of seconds?

How come my self-healing is interrupted by damage but someone else can just sit there and heal me up through damage?

It really boggles my mind just how incredibly detrimental the current rezz mechanics are. They favor zerging and allow bad players to get away with so much as long as the hang around others.

It just doesn’t make sense on so many levels and leads to absurd situations where you need to kill enemy players 6 times before they stay dead for good. It’s just so incredibly broken it boggles my mind.

Solutions are simple: 3rd party rezzing needs to:

a) take longer than a few seconds, especially with multiple players.

b) be interrupted by damage.

I believe the general consensus is that Vitality is the better survival stat for Thieves. It works against Bleeds, unlike Toughnessand you’re more likely to survive burst.

That said, mathematically a little Toughness goes a long way. Somebody crunched some numbers saying that 500 Toughness reduced incoming damage by roughly 30% for Thieves, so it’s not a bad stat.